
Glass. 
Book. 



'^ A 



ItfST 



I 



THE 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 



" Nomina si nescis, perit et cognitio rerum." 

"He has been at a great feast of languages, and stolen the scraps. 
! they have lived long in the alms-basket of words." 

Love's Labour's Lost, Act v., Sc. 2. \ £ 

" If we knew the original of all the words we meet with, we should thereby be very 
much helped to know the ideas they were first applied to, and made to stand for."— 
Locke. 

"In a language like ours, so many words of which are derived from other languages, 
there are few modes of instruction more useful or more amusing than that of accustom- 
ing young people to seek the etymology or primary meaning of the words they use.- 
There are cases in which more knowledge, of more value, may be conveyed by the 
history of a word than by the history of a campaign. "—Coleridge's Aids to Reflection, 
Aphor. 12. 

" In words contemplated singly, there are boundless stores of moral and historic truth." 
—Trench on Study of Words, 12mo, Lond., 1853. 

" Jock Ashler, the stane-mason that ca's himsel' an arkiteck— there's nae living for 
new words in this new warld neither, and that's anither vex to auld folks such as me." 
—Quoth Meg Dods {St. Ronarfs Well, chap. 2). 

" A good dictionary is the best metaphysical treatise." 

" Etymology, in a moderate degree, is not only useful, as assisting the memory, but 
highly instructive and pleasing. But if pushed so far as to refer all words to a few 
primary elements, it loses all its value. It is like pursuing heraldry up to the first pair 
of mankind,"— Copletion J s Remains, p. 101. 



THE 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY, 

MENTAL, MOEAL, AND METAPHYSICAL; 



QUOTATIONS AND REFERENCES; 



FOR THE USE OF STUDENTS. 



WILLIAM FLEMING, D.D., 

PROFESSOR OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW. 



£wonb <&bxtwvt t 'j&zbwb Httb dfalargeb. 



LONDON AND GLASGOW: 
RICHARD GRIFFIN AND COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS TO THE UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW. 

1858. 



fc> 






BELL AND BAIN, PRINTERS, GLASGOW. 






PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 



The aim of the following work, as its title indicates, is 
humble. It is not proposed to attempt an adequate 
illustration of the difficult and important topics denoted 
or suggested by the several vocables which are succes- 
sively explained. All that is intended is, to assist the 
student towards a right understanding of the language of 
philosophy, and a right apprehension of the questions in 
discussing which that language has been employed. In- 
stead of affixing a positive or precise signification to the 
vocables and phrases, it has been thought better to furnish 
the student with the means of doing so for himself — by 
showing whence they are derived, or of what they are 
compounded, and how they have been employed. In like 
manner, the quotations and references have not been 
selected with the view of supporting any particular system 
of philosophy, but rather with the view of leading to free 
inquiry, extended reading, and careful reflection, as the 
surest means of arriving at true and sound conclusions. 

In our Scottish Universities, the study of philosophy is 
entered upon by those who, in respect of maturity of years 
and intellect, and in respect of previous preparation and 



VI PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 

attainment, differ widely from one another. To many, a 
help like the present may not be necessary. To others, the 
Author has reason to think it may be useful. Indeed, it was 
the felt want of some such help, in the discharge of pro- 
fessional duty, which prompted the attempt to supply it. The 
labour has been greater than the result can indicate or 
measure. But, should the Vocabulary assist the young 
student by directing him what to read, and how to under- 
stand what he reads, in philosophy, the labourer shall have 
received the hire for which he wrought. 



The College, Glasgow. 

November, 1856. 



PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 



The Vocabulary of Philosophy was originally prepared 
for the use of a Class of students who give attendance on a 
lengthened course of Lectures on Moral Philosophy. The 
words and phrases selected for explanation, "were chiefly such 
as were actually employed in the Lectures, or such as the 
students were likely to meet with in the course of their 
reading. Of the words and phrases of the German Philo- 
sophy, only such were introduced as had found their way 
into common use, 

The Vocabulary having been found useful, beyond the 
limits for which it was originally intended, a Second Edition 
has speedily been called for. Useful suggestions have spon- 
taneously been made to the Author by persons with whom 
he was previously unacquainted ; and, among others, by Mr. 
Haywood, the Translator of the Criticism of the Pure 
Reason, Mr. Morell, who was formerly a student at this 
University, and who is now so well known by his valuable 
contributions to Philosophy, had the kindness to go over the 
contents of the Vocabulary, and to furnish a list of such 
additional words and phrases as might be introduced with 
advantage. The like good office was rendered by Dr. M'C 



V1U PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 

the distinguished Professor of Logic and Metaphysics in 
Queen's College, Belfast ; and the Author has done what he 
could to make this Edition more complete and useful. The 
quotations have, in some instances, been shortened ; and, 
without much increasing the size of the work, many additional 
words and phrases, from the different departments of Philo- 
sophy, have been introduced. 

It still retains the name and form of a Vocabulary, in 
the hope that it may prove useful in our higher Academies 
and Colleges. But, should suitable encouragement and co- 
operation be obtained, it is in contemplation, by extending 
the plan and enlarging the articles, to claim for the work 
a higher title, by trying to make it instrumental in rendering 
to Philosophy among ourselves, a service similar to what has 
been rendered to Philosophy in France, by the publication of 
the Dictionnaire des Sciences Philosophiques. 



Tpie College, Glasgow, 
February, 1858, 



THE 



'OCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 



ABDUCTION (abductio, dwwyayvi, a leading away) is a kind of 
syllogism in which it is plain that the major extreme is con- 
tained in the middle ; but it is not apparent that the middle is 
included in the minor extreme, although this is equally credible 
or more so than the conclusion. From this, therefore, that its 
major proposition is plain, it approaches to demonstration; but 
it is not yet demonstration, since its assumption or minor pro- 
position is not evident. But the assumption is not evident 
because it is not immediate, but requires proof to make the de- 
monstration complete. For example— -All whom God absolves 
are free from sin. But God absolves all who are in Christ. 
Therefore all who are in Christ are free from sin. In this 
apagogic syllogism the major proposition is self-evident; but 
the assumption is not plain till another proposition proving it 
is introduced, namely, God condemns sin in them by the 
mission of his Son. This mode of reasoning is called abduction, 
because it withdraws us from the conclusion to the proof of a 
proposition concealed or not expressed. It is described by 
Aristotle, Prior. AnalyL, lib. ii., cap. 25. 

ABILITY and INABILITY — (NATURAL and MORAX). 
Ability (Nat.) is power to do certain acts, in consequence of 
being possessed of the requisite means, and being unrestrained 
in their exercise; thus we say ability to walk, the power of 
seeing, &c. 
inability (Nat.) is the opposite of this; as when we say of a 
blind man, he is unable to see ; or when an object is too dis- 
tant, we say we are unable to see it. 



2 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

ABILITY— 

Ability (Mor.) is the disposition to use rightly the powers and 
opportunities which God has given; as when it is written, "It 
is a joy to the just to do judgment." 

Inability (Mor.) is the want of a right disposition ; as in those 
of whom it is written, "They have eyes full of adultery, and 
cannot cease from sin." "If there is anything besides want 
of inclination which prevents a man from performing a par- 
ticular act, he is said to be naturally unable to do it. If 
unwillingness is the only obstacle in the way, he is said to 
be morally unable. That which prevents a man from doing 
as he will, is natural inability. That which prevents him 
from doing as he ought, is moral inability ." — Day, On the Will, 
pp. 96, 97. 
ABSCISSIO INFINITI is a phrase applied by some logical 
writers to a series of arguments used in any inquiry in which 
we go on excluding, one by one, certain suppositions, or certain 
classes of things, from that whose real nature we are seeking 
to ascertain. Thus, certain symptoms, suppose, exclude 
"small-pox ;" that is, prove this not to be the patient's dis- 
order; other symptoms, suppose, exclude "scarlatina" &c, 
and so one may proceed by gradually narrowing the range of 
possible suppositions." — Whately, Log., b. ii., ch. iii., s. 4, and 
ch. v., s. 1, subs. 7. 
ABSOLUTE (cibsolutum, from ab and solvo, to free or loose from) 
signifies what is free from restriction or limit. 

a We must know what is to be meant by absolute or absolute- 
ness; whereof I find two main significations. First, absolute 
signifieth perfect, and absoluteness, perfection; hence we have 
in Latin this expression — Perfectum est omnibus numeris absol- 
utum. And in our vulgar language we say a thing is absolutely 
good when it is perfectly good. Next, absolute signifieth free 
from tie or bond, which in Greek is d7ro7iS^v^evo^. v — Knox, 
Hist, of Reform., Pref. 

1. As meaning what is complete or perfect in itself, as a 
man, a tree, it is opposed to what is relative. 

2. As meaning what is free from restriction, it is opposed to 
what exists secundum quid. The soul of man is immortal 
absolutely; man is immortal only as to his soul. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 3 

ABSOLUTE— 

3. As meaning what is unclerived, it denotes self- existence, 
and is predicable only of the First Cause. 

4. It signifies not only what is free from external cause, but 
also free from condition. 

Absolute, Unconditioned, Infinite. — "The Absolute, taking its 
etymological sense, may be explained as that which is free 
from all necessary relation ; which exists in and by itself, and 
does not require the prior or simultaneous existence of anything 
else. The Unconditioned, in like manner, is that which is sub- 
ject to no law or condition of being ; which exists, therefore, 
in and by itself, and does not imply the prior or simultaneous 
existence of anything else. The Absolute and Unconditioned are 
also identical with the Real; for relation is but a phenomenon, 
implying and depending on the prior existence of things related ; 
while the true Real is unrelated. Such a science as metaphysics, 
which has in all ages been proclaimed as the science of the 
Absolute, the Unconditioned, and the Real, according to Kant, 
must be unattainable by man ; for all knowledge is conscious- 
ness, and all consciousness implies a relation between the sub- 
ject or person conscious, and the object or thing of which he is 
conscious. An object of consciousness cannot be Absolute; 
for consciousness depends on the laws of the conscious mind, 
its existence as such implies an act of consciousness, and 
consciousness is a relation. It cannot be the Unconditioned ; 
for consciousness depends on the laws of the conscious mind, 
and these are conditions. It cannot be the Real; for the laws 
of our consciousness can only giye us things as they appear to 
us, and do not tell us what they are in themselves." — Mansel, 
Lecture on Philosophy of Kant, p. 25. 

u Mr. Calderwood defines the Absolute, which he rightly 
identifies with the Infinite, as 'that which is free from all 
necessary relation:' c it may exist in relation, provided that 
relation be not a necessary condition of its existence.' Hence 
he holds that the Absolute may exist in the relation of conscious- 
ness, and in that relation be apprehended, though imperfectly, 
by man. On this theory we have two absolutes: the Absolute 
as it exists out of consciousness, and the Absolute as it is known 
in consciousness. Mr. Calderwood rests his theory on the 



4 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

ABSOLUTE— 

assumption that these two are one. How is this identity to be 
ascertained? How do I know that the absolute is my absolute? 
I cannot compare them ; for comparison is a relation, and the 
first Absolute exists out of relation. Again, to compare them, 
I must be in and out of consciousness at the same time ; for 
the first Absolute is never in consciousness, and the second is 
never out of it. Again, the Absolute as known is an object of 
consciousness; and an object of consciousness as such, cannot 
exist, save in relation. But the true Absolute, by its definition, 
can exist out of relation; therefore the Absolute as known is 
not the true Absolute. Mr. Calderwood's Absolute in conscious- 
ness is only the Relative under a false name." — Mansel, Lecture 
on Philosophy of Kant, p. 38. 

According to Sir William Hamilton (Discussions, p. 13), 
u The Unconditioned denotes the genus of which the Infinite 
and the Absolute are the species." 

As to our knowledge or conception of the Absolute, there 
are different opinions. 

1. According to Sir William Hamilton, "The mind can 
conceive, and consequently can know, only the limited, and 
the conditionally limited. The unconditionally unlimited, or 
the Infinite, the unconditionally limited, or the Absolute, cannot 

I positively be construed to the mind ; they can be conceived 
at all only by thinking away, or abstraction of those very 
conditions under which thought itself is realized ; consequently 
the notion of the Unconditioned is only negative — negative of 
the conceivable itself." 

2. According to Kant, the Absolute or Unconditioned is not an 
object of knowledge ; but its notion as a regulative principle of 
the mind itself, is more than a mere negation of the conditioned. 

3. According to Schelling, it is cognizable, but not con- 
ceivable ; it can be known by a sinking back into identity with 
the Absolute, but is incomprehensible by consciousness and 
reflection, which are only of the Relative and the Different. 

4. According to Cousin, it is cognizable and conceivable by 
consciousness and reflection, under relation, difference, and 
plurality. 

Instead of saying that God is Absolute and Infinite, 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

ABSOLUTE— 

Krause, and his admirer, Tiberghien (Essai des Connaissances 
Humaines, pp. 738, 745), ascribe to him Seite (selbheit) and 
Totality. Totality or the Infinite manifests itself everywhere 
in nature. Nature is made up of wholes, and all these con- 
stitute one whole. In spirit everything manifests itself under 
the character of spontaneity or seite. Spirit always is what it 
is by its own individual efforts. 

All philosophy aims at a knowledge of the Absolute under 
different phases. In psychology, the fundamental question is, 
have we ideas that are a priori and absolute? — in logic, is 
human knowledge absolute ? — in ethics, is the moral law abso- 
lute rectitude ? — and in metaphysics, what is the ultimate 
ground of all existence or absolute being ? 

See Edinburgh Review for October, 1829 ; Sir William 
Hamilton (Discussions) ; Tiberghien (Essai des Connaissances 
Humaines). — V. Infinite, Unconditioned, Real. 
ABSTINENCE (abs teneo, to hold from or off) — "is. whereby a 
man refraineth from anything which he may lawfully take." — 
Elyot, Governour, b. iii., c. 16. 

Abstmence is voluntarily refraining from things which 
nature, and especially physical nature, needs or delights in, 
for a moral or religious end. It corresponds to the 'A-rg^oy 
of the precept of Epictetus, * kviyfiv kui dinky^v ; Sustine et 
abstine. The Stoics inculcated abstinence in order to make 
the soul more independent of the body and the things 
belonging to the body. — Christian abstinence is founded in 
humility and self-mortification. — V. Ascetism. 
ABSTRACT, ABSTRACTION (abstraction from abs traho, to 
draw away from. It is also called separatio and resolutio). 

Dobrisch observes that the term abstraction is used some- 
times in a psychological, sometimes in a logical sense. In the 
former we are said to abstract the attention from certain 
distinctive features of objects presented (abstraliere [inentcm] 
a different lis). In the latter, we are said to abstract certain 
portions of a given concept from the remainder (abstraliere 
differentias). — Mansel, Prolegom. Log., note, p. 26. 
Abstraction (Psychological), says Mr. Stewart (Elements of the 
Philosophy of Human Mind, chap, iv.), "is the power of con- 



6 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

ABSTRACTION- 

sidering certain qualities or attributes of an object apart from the 
rest ; or, as I would rather choose to define it, the power which 
the understanding has of separating the combinations which 
are presented to it." Perhaps it may be more correctly regarded 
as a process rather than a power — as a function rather than 
a faculty. Dr. Reid has called it (Jntell. Powers, essay v., 
chap. 3) u an operation of the understanding. It consists in 
the resolving or analyzing a subject (object) into its known 
attributes, and giving a name to each attribute, which shall 
signify that attribute and nothing more." Attributes are not 
presented to us singly in nature, but in the concrete, or growing 
together, and it is by abstraction that we consider them 
separately. In looking at a tree we may perceive simultane- . 
ously its trunk, and its branches, and its leaves, and its fruit ; 
or we may contemplate any one of these to the exclusion of all 
the rest ; and when we do so it is by the operation of mind which 
has been called abstraction. It implies an exercise of will as 
well as of understanding ; for there must be the determination 
and effort to fix the energy of the mind on the attribute 
specially contemplated. 

The chemist really separates into their elements those bodies 
which are submitted to his analysis. The psychologist does 
the same thing mentally. Hence abstraction has been dis- 
tinguished as real and mental. But as the object presented to 
the psychologist may be an object of sense or an object of 
thought, the process of abstraction may be either real or mental. 
He may pluck off a branch from a tree, or a leaf from a branch, 
in order to consider the sensation or perception which is occa- 
sioned in him. And in contemplating mind, he may think of 
its capacity of feeling without thinking of its power of activity, 
or of the faculty of memory apart from any or all of the other 
faculties with which it is allied. 
Abstraction (Logical), " As we have described it," says Mr. Thom- 
son (Outline of the Laws of Thought, p. 107), "would include 
three separate acts ; first, an act of comparison, which brings 
several intuitions together; next, one of reflection, which seeks 
for some marks which they all possess, and by which they may 
be combined into one group; and last, one of generalization, 



■■I'ABULAEY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

ABSTRACTION— 

sh forms the new general notion or conception. Kant. 
confines the name of abstraction to the last of the 
three. ply ft to the second. It is not of much con- 

seqiic Lher we enlarge or narrow the meaning of the 

word, ac long as we see the various : a of the process. The 
w : 1 1 m : ing away of the common marks from all the 

distinctive marks which the single objects have." 

•• The process, 71 says Dr. What ely (Log., book i., sect. 6), 
ih the mind arrives at the notions expressed by 'com- 
mon' (or in popular language, -general') terms is properly 
. ' _ socialization, 1 though it is usually (and truly) said to 
be the business of abstraction; for generalization is one of the 
purposes to which abstraction is applied. When we draw off 
.plate separately any part of an object presented to 
the mind, disregarding the rest of it, we are said to abstract 
that pari of it. Urns, a person might, when a rose was before 
sye or his mind, make the scent a distinct object of atten- 
tion, laying aside all thought of the colour, fomi, &c. ; and 
thus, :• .-;-:-. though it were the only rose he had ever met with, 
juld be employing the faculty of abstraction ; but if, in 
rinplating several objects, and finding that they agree in 
in points, we abstract the circumstances of agreement, 
warding the differences, and give to all and each of these 
objects a name applicable to them in respect of this agreement. 
— i. ... :<n name, as *rose: ? or, again, if we give a name 

attribute wherein they agree, as 'fragrance,' or -red- 
ness.' we are then said to -generalize." Abstraction, therefore. 
o : ue : ; jssarily imply generalization, though generalization 
implies abstraction." In opposition to this, see Thomson, Out- 
line of the Tl :. . sect 24. 

•*A person who had never seen but one rose." says Mr. 

Stewart Adden V to vol. L, Phil, of Hum. Mind), "might yet 

have been able to consider its colour apart from its other 

qualities: and. therefore, there maybe such a thing as an idea 

which is at once abstract and particular. Alter having per- 

s belonging to a variety of individuals, we 

LSI leaf it without reference to any of them, and thus form 

notion of i whiteness in general, which may be 



8 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

ABSTRACTION— 

called a general abstract idea. The words abstract and general, 
therefore, when applied to ideas, are as completely distinct 
from each other as any two words to be found in the language. 
It is indeed true, that the formation of every general notion 
presupposes abstraction, but it is surely improper, on this 
account, to call a general term an abstract term, or a general 
idea an abstract idea." 

Mr. John S. Mill also censures severely (Log., vol. i., 2d 
edition, p. 35) the practice of applying the expression u abstract 
name " to all names which are the result of abstraction or gen- 
eralization, and consequently to all general names, instead of 
confining it to the names of attributes. He uses the term 
abstract as opposed to concrete. By an abstract name he means 
the name of an attribute — by a concrete name the name of an 
object. The sea is a concrete name. Saltness is an abstract 
name. Some abstract names are general names, such as colour ; 
but rose-colour, a name obtained by abstraction, is not a 
general name. 

u By abstract terms, which should be carefully distinguished 
from general names, I mean those which do not designate any 
object or event, or any class of objects or events, but an attri- 
bute or quality belonging to them ; and which are capable of 
standing grammatically detached, without being joined to 
other terms : such as, the words roundness, swiftness, length, 
innocence, equity, health, whiteness."— S. Bailey, Letters on 
Phil. Human Mind, p. 195. 

" When the notion derived from the view taken of any 
object," says Dr. Whately {Log., book ii., chap. 5, sect 1), "is 
expressed with a reference to, or as in conjunction with, the 
object that furnished the notion, it is expressed by a concrete 
term, as 'foolish' or 'fool ;' when without any such reference, 
by an abstract term, as 'folly.'" And he adds in a note, "It 
is unfortunate that some writers have introduced the fashion 
of calling all common terms abstract terms." — V. Term. 

A French philosopher has expressed himself on this point to 
the following effect : — " In every class, genus, or species, there 
are two things which may be conceived distinctly, the objects 
united in the class, and the characters which serve to unite them. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 9 

ABSTRACTION— 

Hence it follows, that under every term which represents that 
ideal whole which we call genus, under the term ' bird,' for ex- 
ample, there are two different ideas, — the idea of the number 
of the objects united, and the idea of the common characters ; 
this is what is called the extension and the comprehension of 
general terms. Sometimes thereis a word to denote the ex- 
tension, and another word to denote the comprehension ; as 
* mortals ' and c mortality.' And this has led some philosophers 
to say that there are general ideas which are concrete and gen- 
eral ideas which are abstract — the latter referring only to the 
qualities which are common, and the former to the qualities 
and to the objects which possess them." 

" The mind," says Mr. Locke (Essay on Hum. Under., book 
ii., chap. 11, sect. 9), " makes particular ideas received from 
particular objects to become general, which is done by con- 
sidering them as they are in the mind such appearances, 
separate from all other existences, and the circumstances of real 
existence, as time, place, or any other concomitant ideas. This 
is called abstraction, whereby ideas taken from particular beings, 
become general representatives of all of the same kind : and 
their names general names, applicable to whatever exists con- 
formable to such abstract ideas." — See also book iv., chap. 7, 
sect. 9. 

In reference to this, Bishop Berkeley has said (Principles of 
Hum. Know., Introd., sect. 10), "I own myself able to abstract 
ideas, in one sense, as when I consider some particular parts 
or qualities separated from others, with which, though they are 
united in some object, yet it is possible they may really exist 
without them. But I deny that I can abstract one from another, 
or conceive separately those qualities which it is impossible 
should exist separately ; or that I can frame a general notion 
by abstracting from particulars, as aforesaid, which two last 
are the proper acceptation of abstraction." 

" It seems to me," says Mr. Hume (Essays, p. 371, n. c. edit.. 
1758), "not impossible to avoid these absurdities and con- 
tradictions" (see his Essay on Sceptical Pliilosop)hy), u if it be 
admitted that there are no such things as abstract in general 
ideas, properly speaking, but that all general ideas are in reality 



10 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

ABSTRACTION— 

particular ones attached to a general term which recalls, upon 
occasion, other particular ones that resemble in certain circum- 
stances the idea present to the mind. Thus, when the term 
4 horse ' is pronounced, we immediately figure to ourselves the 
idea of a black or white animal of a particular size or figure ; 
but as that term is also used to be applied to animals of other 
colours, figures, and sizes, their ideas, though not actually present 
to the imagination, are easily recalled, and our reasoning and 
conclusion proceed in the same way as if they were actually 
present." 

In reference to the views of Berkeley and Hume which are 
supported by S. Bailey in Letters on Phil. Hum. Mind, see Dr. 
Reid (Intell. Powers, essay v., chap. 6.) 

The Rev. Sidney Smith {Lectures on Mor. Phil., lect. iii.) 
mentions an essay on Abstraction by Dumarsais, and calls it an 
admirable abridgment of Locke's Essay. — V. Common, Con- 
crete, Generalization. 

ABSTRACTIVE: (KNOWLEDGE) and INTUITIVE. 

The knowledge of the Deity has been distinguished into ab- 
stractive and intuitive, or knowledge of simple intelligence and 
knowledge of vision, or immediate beholding. By the former 
mode of knowing, God knows all things possible, whether they 
are actually to happen or not. By the latter He knows things 
future as if they were actually beheld or envisaged by him. — 
Baronius, Metaphys., sect. 12, disput. ii. 

ABSURD (ab surdo, a reply from a deaf man who has not heard 
what he replies to, or, according to Vossius, that which should 
be heard with deaf ears) properly means that which is logically 
contradictory ; as, a triangle with four sides. What is contrary 
to experience merely cannot be called absurd, for experience 
extends only to facts and laws which we know ; but there may 
be facts and laws which we have not observed and do not know, 
and facts and laws not actually manifested may yet be possible. 
— V. Argument (Indirect). 

ACADEMICS. — u There are some philosophers who have made 
denying their profession, and who have even established on that 
foundation the whole of their philosophy ; and amongst these 
philosophers, some are satisfied with denying certainty, admit- 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 11 

ACADEMICS— 

ting at the same time probability, and these are the Xtw Acad- 
emies : the others, who are the Pyrrlwnists, have denied even 
this probability, and have maintained that all things are equally 
certain and uncertain." — Port. Ray. Log., part iv., chap. 1. 

The Academic school embraces a period of four ages, from 
Plato to Antiochtts. Some admit three Academies —first, that 
of Plato, 388 b.c. : middle, that of Arcesilas, 244 B.C. : new, 
that of Carneades and Clitomaehus, 160 B.C. To these some 
add a fourth, that of Philon and Charmides, and a fifth, that of 
Antiochtts. But Plato, and his true disciples, Speusippus and 
Xenocrates. should not be classed with these semi-sceptics. 
whose characteristic doctrine was to z-/0«jrojr, or the probable. 

See Foiteher (Dissertatio ele Phil. Acaelem., 12, Paris, 1692): 
Gerlach {Commeatatio ExMbt is tk Proleililitate Disputationes, 
4to, Goett.) 

ACADEJIY. — Academtts or Hecademus left to the inhabitants of 
Athens a piece of ground for a promenade, Hipparchus, son of 
Piristrattts enclosed it with walls. Cimon, son of Miltiades. 
planted it with trees. Plato assembled his disciples in it, hence 
they were called Academics. — Biograph. Urn 

ACATALEPSY (a. privative ; and *«*t«Ajji///£, compreliensio, in- 
comprehensibility) is the term employed by Bacon (Adv. of 
Lea 7;<:';<(7. Moffet's trans., p. 140) to denote the doctrine held 
by the ancient academics and sceptics that human knowledge 
never amounts to certainty, but only to probability. w * Their 
chief error." says Bacon. " lay in this, that they falsely charged 
the perceptions of the senses : by doing which they tore up the 
sciences by the roots. But the senses, though they may often 
either deceive or fail us. yet can afford a sufficient basis for real 
science." Hence he says (Novum Organum, b. i., aphor. 126), 
" We do not meditate or propose acatalepsy, but eucatalepsy, 
for we do not derogate from sense, but help it. and we do not de- 
spise the understanding, but direct it." Arcesilas. chief of the 
second Academy, taught that we know nothing with certainty, 
in opposition to the dogmatism of the Stoics, who taught 
y.xrcc/.r.S;:. or the possibility of seizing the truth. All Sceptics 
and Pyrrhonians were called Acatedeptics. — V. Academics. 

ACCIDEM (accidoi t0 happen) is a mollification or quality which 



12 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

ACCIDENT- 

does not essentially belong to a thing, nor form one of its con- 
stituent and invariable attributes ; as motion in relation to 
matter, or heat to iron. The scholastic definition of it is ens 
entis, or ens in alio, while substance was defined to be ens per se. 
"Accident, in its widest technical sense (equivalent to 
attribute), is anything that is attributed to another, and can 
only be conceived as belonging to some substance (in which 
sense it is opposed to substance) ; in its narrower and more 
properly logical sense, it is a predicable which may be present 
or absent, the essence of the species remaining the same ; as 
for a man to be ; walking,' or ' a native of Paris.' Of these 
two examples, the former is what logicians call a separable 
accident, because it may be separated from the individual 
(e. g., he may sit down) *, the latter is an inseparable accident, 
being not separable from the individual (i. e., he who is a native 
of Paris can never be otherwise) ; from the individual, I say, 
because every accident must be separable from the species, else 
it would be a property." — Whately, Log., book ii., chap. 5, 
sect. 4, and index. — V. Substance, Phenomenon. 

ACCIBENTAL. — Aristotle (Metaphys., lib. iv., cap. 30,) says, 
"Suppose that in digging a trench to plant a tree you found a 
treasure, that is accident, for the one is neither the effect nor 
the consequent of the other ; and it is not ordinarily that in 
planting a tree you find a treasure. If, then, a thing happen 
to any being, even with the circumstances of place and time, 
but which has no cause to determine its being, either actually, 
or in such a place, that thing is an accident. An accident, 
then, has no cause determinate, but only fortuitous ; but a for- 
tuitous cause is undetermined. Accident is also that which 
exists in an object without being one of the characters distinc- 
tive of its essence ; such is the property of a triangle that its 
three angles are equal to two right angles. Such accidents 
may be eternal ; accidents properly so called are not." 

A phenomenon may be constant, inherent in the nature of 
things, and in that sense essential, as the sparkling of the 
diamond in light, or the sinking of a stone in the water ; but 
an accident, according to Aristotle, is that which neither occurs 
necessarily nor ordinarily. — V. Chance. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 13 

ACOSMIST (#, priv., and xoapog, world). — " Spinoza did not deny 
the existence of God ; he denied the existence of the world ; 
he was consequently an acosmist, and not an atheist." — Lewes, 
Biograph. Hist, of Philosophy p. 1. 

"It has of late been a favourite criticism of Spinoza to say 
with Hegel, 'that his system is not atheism but acosmism ; and 
this is true in a speculative point of view. But if I allow of no 
God distinct from the aggregate of the universe, myself in- 
cluded, what object have I of worship ? Or if, according to 
the later manifestations of Pantheism, the Divine mind is but 
the sum total of every finite consciousness, my own included, 
what religious relation between God and man, is compatible 
with the theory ? And, accordingly, the Pantheism of Hegel 
has found its natural development in the atheism of Feuerbach." 
— Mansel, Prolegom. Log., p. 279, note. 
ACROAMATICAL (from d^ooiofcett, to hear). — "Aristotle was 
wont to divide his lectures and readings into Acroamatical and 
Exotericcd; some of them contained only choice matter, and 
they were read privately to a select auditory ; others contained 
but ordinary stuff, and were promiscuously, and in public, ex- 
posed to the hearing of all that would." — Hales, Golden Remains 
(On John xviii. 36). — V. Exoteric. 

" In the life of Aristotle, by Mr. Blakesley " (published in 
the Encyclop. Metrop.), "it has been shown, we think most 
satisfactorily, that the acroamatic treatises of Aristotle differed 
from the exoteric, not in the abstruseness or mysteriousness of 
then subject-matter, but in this, that the one formed part of 
a course or system, while the other were casual discussions or 
lectures on a particular thesis." — Mor. and Met. Phil., by 
Maurice, note, p. 165. 

Some of the early Fathers adopted a similar distinction, in 
giving instructions to the Catechumens, beginners {kolt $%o$, 
according to sound — viva voce instruction), and the Teleioi 
(finished, or thoroughly instructed, from rsT^og, an end). 

This corresponds to the difference between the written law 
and the traditions of the elders. 

Plutarch (in Alexand.) and Aulus Gellius (1. xx.. c. 4) 
maintain that the acroamatic works had natural philosophy 
and logic for their subjects, whereas the exoteric treated of 



14 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

AC ROAMATICAL- 

rhetoric, ethics, and politics. Strabo (1. 13, p. 608), Cicero 
(Ad Atticum., 13, 19), and Ammonius Herm. (Ad Categor. 
Aristot.), maintain that they were distinguished, not by differ- 
ence of subject, but of form ; the acroamatic being discourses, 
the exoteric dialogues. Simplicius (Ad Categor, in Proem.) 
thus characterizes the acroamatic in contradistinction to the 
exoteric works, u distinguished by pregnant brevity, closeness 
of thought, and quickness of transitions," from his more ex- 
panded, more perspicuous, and more popular productions. 

Buhle has a Commentatio de Libris Arist., Eocot. et Acroam., 
in his edit, of the works of Aristotle, 5 vols., 8vo, Deux Ponts, 
1791, pp. 142, 143. 
ACT, in Metaphysics and in Logic, is opposed to power. Power is 
simply a faculty or property of anything, as gravity of bodies. 
Act is the exercise or manifestation of a power or property, 
the realization of a fact, as the falling of a heavy body. We 
cannot conclude from power to act ; a posse ad actum ; but 
from act to power the conclusion is good. Ab actu ad posse 
valet illatio. 

An act is Immanent or Transient. An immanent act has 
no effect on anything out of the agent. Sensation is an 
immanent act of the senses, cognition of the intellect. A tran- 
sient act produces an operation or result out of and beyond the 
agent. The act of writing and of building are transient acts — 
they begin with the agent, but produce results which may 
affect others. 

An act of the will is Elicit or Imperate. An elicit act of 
will is an act produced immediately by the will, and contained 
within it, as velle and nolle, to determine to do or not to do. 
An elicit act of will is either volition, which has reference to an 
end or ultimate object, or election, which has reference to 
means. — V. Volition, Election. 

An imperate act of will is a movement of body or mindl 
following on a determination of will, as running after or running [ 
away, attending or not attending. Also an act done by others, 
when we order or forbid them to do, encourage or dissuade, 
assist or prevent. 
ACTION. — " The word action is properly applied to those exertions I 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 15 

ACTION— 

which are consequent on volition, whether the exertion be 
made on external objects, or be confined to our mental opera- 
tions. Thus we say the mind is active when engaged in study." 
— Stewart, Outlines, Xo. 111. 

It is by the presence of will and intention that an action is 
distinguished from an event. The intention is one thing ; the 
effect is another ; the two together constitute the action. 
ACTION and ACT are not synonymous. 1. Act does not neces- 
sarily imply an external result, action does. We may speak 
of repentance as an act, we could not call it an action. 2. An 
act must be individual; we may speak of a course of action. 
Lastly, act 9 when qualified, is oftener, though not universally, 
coupled with another substantive : action always by an adjective 
preceding it. TTe say a kind action, not an act of kindness. 
A kind act might be admissible, though not usual, but an 
action of kindness is not used, though an action of great kind- 
ness might be. Deed is synonymous with act. 

" Act (actum) is a thing done ; action (actio) is doing : act, 
therefore, is an incident ; an action, a process or habit ; a vir- 
tuous act; a course of virtuous action." — Taylor, Synonyms, 
Actions, in Morals, are distinguished, according to the manner 
of their being called forth, into spontaneous or instinctive, 
voluntary or reflective, and free or deliberate ; according to 
the faculty from which they proceed, into physical, intellectual, 
and moral ; and according to the nature of the action and 
character of the agent, into right and wrong, virtuous or 
vicious, praiseworthy or blameworthy. 

An action is said to be materially right, when, without regard 
to the end or the intention of the agent, the action is in 
conformity with some moral law or rule. An action is said to 
be formally right, when the end or the intention of the agent 
is right, and the action is not materially wrong. For a man 
to give his goods to feed the poor is materially right, even 
though he should not have charity or brotherly love, but 
when he has charity or brotherly love, and throws even a mite 
into the treasury of the poor, the action is formally right, 
although, in effect, it may fall short of that which is only 
materially right. 



16 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

ACTIVE. — That which causes change is active; that which is 
changed is passive. — Taylor, Elements of Thought. 

activity. — V. Will. 

ACTUAL (quod est in actu) is opposed to potential. Before a 
thing is, it has a capacity of becoming. A rough stone is a 
statue potentially ; when chiselled, actually. 

"The relation of the potential to the actual Aristotle ex- 
hibits by the relation of the unfinished to the finished work ; 
of the unemployed carpenter to the one at work upon his 
building ; of the individual asleep to him awake. Potentially 
the seed-corn is the tree, but the grown-up tree is it actually ; 
the potential philosopher is he who is not at this moment 
philosophizing; even before the battle the better general is 
the potential conqueror ; in fact everything is potentially which 
possesses a principle of motion, of development, or of change ; 
and which, if unhindered by anything external, will be of itself. 
Actuality or entelechy, on the other hand, indicates the perfect 
art, the end as gained, the completely actual (the grown-up 
tree, e. g., is the entelechy of the seed-corn), that activity in 
which the act and the completeness of the act fall together, 
e. g., to see, to think where he sees and he has seen, he thinks 
and he has thought (the acting and the completeness of the 
act), are one and the same, while in these activities which 
involve a becoming, e. g., to learn, to go, to become well, the 
two are separated." — Schwegier, Hist, of Phil, p. 123. 

Actual is also opposed to virtual. The oak is shut up in the 
acorn virtually. 

Actual is also opposed to real. My will, though really 
existing as a faculty, only begins to have an actual existence 
from the time that I will anything. — V. Real, Virtual. 

ACTUS PRIMUS (in scholastic philosophy) — est rei esse, or actus 
quidditativus. 

ACTUS SECUNDUS — est rei operari, or actus entitativus. 

ADAGE (ad agendum aptum) — a practical saying, fit for use, a 
rule of action. u From the Latin adagium, sl saying handed 
down from antiquity, comes the English adage, which denotes 
an antique proverb." — Taylor, Synonyms. On the disagree- 
ment and similitude between adagies, apophthegms, and moral 
Tvoopai, see Erasmus, in the Prolegomena to his Adagia. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 17 

ADJURATION (from ad-juro, to put upon oath). — " Our Saviour, 
when the high priest adjured him by the living God, made no 
scruple of replying upon that adjuration" — Clarke, Works 
vol. ii., ser. 125. 

ADMIRATION. — "We shall find that admiration is as superior 
to surprise and wonder, simply considered, as knowledge is 
superior to ignorance ; for its appropriate signification is that 
act of the mind by which we discover, approve, and enjoy 
some unusual species of excellence." — Cogan, On the Passions, 
part i., c. 2. 

ADORATION. — To adore (from the Latin ad ord), signifies, to 
carry to the mouth ; as in order to kiss one's hand, the hand 
is carried to the mouth ; but it also includes in this action a 
sense of veneration or worship. u If I beheld the sun when it 
shined, or the moon walking in brightness, and my mouth had 
kissed my hand, this also were iniquity." (Job xxxi. 26, 27.) As 
an act of worship, adoration is due only to God. But the form 
of kissing the hand to mortals was also used in the East. 
Pharaoh speaking to Joseph says, u According to thy word 
shall all my people kiss " — that is, in token of veneration to 
your order. (Gen. xli. 40, margin.) 

ADSCITITIOUS (from ad-scisco, to seek after), that which is 
added or assumed. " You apply to your hypothesis of an 
adscititious spirit, what he (Philo) says concerning this Kuevpoe 
Oelov, divine spirit or soul, infused into man by God's breathing." 
— Clarke, Letter to Dodioell. 

AESTHETICS (aMwig, perception or feeling). — "That science 
which refers the first principles in the arts to sensation and 
sentiment, as distinguished from mere instruction and 
utility." 

The science of the beautiful and the philosophy of the fine 
arts. Various theories have been entertained as to the idea 
of the beautiful, by Plato, Plotinus, and Augustine. In modern 
times, the term aesthetics was first used in a scientific sense by 
A. Baumgarten, a disciple of Christian Wolf. In his JEsthetica, 
2 vols., 8vo, Frankf., 1750-8, he considered the idea of the 
beautiful as an indistinct perception or feeling accompanying 
the moral ideas. Mendelsshon and others identified the idea of 
the beautiful with the idea of the good. Shaftesbury and 
c 



18 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY 

ESTHETICS— 

Hutcheson regarded the two ideas as intimately connected. 
At the close of the eighteenth century, (Esthetics was scientifi- 
cally developed in Germany by Kant, and has been zealously 
prosecuted by Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. Besides the 
writings of these philosophers, consult Cours (T Esthetique 
par Ph. Damiron, 8vo, Paris, 1842 ; The Philosophy of 
the Beautiful, by John G. Mac Vicar, D.D., Edin., 1855 ; 
Reid, IntelL Pow., essay viii., ch. 4. — V. Beauty, Ideal 
(Beau). 

AETIOLOGY (uhia, cause ; T^oyog, discourse), is coming into use, 
by Dr. Whewell and others, to denote that department of 
Philosophy which inquires into causes. 

AFFECTION. — -" There are various principles of action in man 
which have persons for their immediate object, and imply, in 
their very nature, our being well or ill affected to some person, 
or at least to some animated being. Such principles I shall 
call by the general name of affections, whether they dispose us 
to do good or hurt to others." — Eeid, Act Pow., essay iii., part 
ii., chap. 3-6. 

They are usually distinguished into benevolent, as esteem, 
gratitude, friendship ; and malevolent, as hatred, envy, jealousy, 
revenge. 

This term is applied to all the modes of the sensibility, or to 
all states of mind in which we are purely passive. By Des- 
cartes (Traite des Passions, art. 83) it is employed to denote 
some degree of love. — V. Love, Sensibility. 

AFFINITY is a relation contracted by, or resulting from, marriage ; 
in contradistinction to consanguinity, or relation by blood. — V. 

C ONS ANGUINIT Y. 
AFFIRMATION (xMTatpciatg) is the attributing of one thing to 
another, or the admitting simply that something exists. A 
mental affirmation is a judgment ; when expressed it becomes a 
proposition. — V. Judgment, Proposition. 

In Law, affirmation is opposed to oath. There are certain 
separatists, who, from having scruples as to the lawfulness of 
oath-taking, are allowed to make a solemn affirmation that 
what they say is true ; and if they make a false affirmation they 
are liable to the penalties of perjury. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 19 

AFFIRMATION— 

" To affirm is a solitary, to confirm is an assisted assevera- 
tion. A man affirms what he declares solemnly ; he confirms 
what he aids another to prove." — Taylor, Synonyms. 

A fortiori. — V. Argument (Indirect). 

AG-JENT (ago, to act), one who, that which, acts. " Nor can 
I think that anybody has such an idea of chance as to make 
it an agent, or really existing and acting cause of anything, 
and much less sure of all things." — Wollaston, Relig. of 
Nat, 8, 5. 

AONOIOIiOOY (Koyo; rqg dyvoiag, the theory of true ignorance), 
is a section of Philosophy intermediate between Epistemology 
and Ontology. M Absolute Being may be that which we are 
ignorant of. We must, therefore, examine and fix what igno- 
rance is, what we are, and can be ignorant of." — Ferrier, Inst, 
of Metaphys., p. 48. 

AliClHOlY or ALCHYMY (al, the article, and %v(a*, what is 
poured, according to Vossius), is that branch of chemistry 
which proposed to transmute metals into gold, to find the 
panacea or universal remedy, &c. Louis Figuier, V Alchemic 
et Les Alchemistes, Paris, 1850. — V. Hermetic Philosophy, 
Rosicrucian. 

ALXEGOUY (aAAo dyo^iveiv, to say another thing), says Quin- 
tilian, exhibits one thing in words and another in meaning. 

u An Allegory is a continued metaphor. It consists in repre- 
senting one subject (object) by another analogous to it ; the 
subject thus represented is not formally mentioned, but we are 
left to discover it by reflection ; and this furnishes a very plea- 
sant exercise to our faculties. A metaphor explains itself by 
the words which are connected with it in their proper and 
natural meaning. When I say, ' Wallace was a thunderbolt 
of war,' l In peace Fingal was the gale of spring,' the thunder- 
bolt of war and the gale of spring are sufficiently explained by 
the mention of Wallace and Fingal. But an allegory may be 
allowed to stand more unconnected with the literal meaning ; 
the interpretation is not so directly pointed out, but is left to 
our own discovery. 

" When the Jewish nation is represented under the notion of 
a vine or a vineyard, as is done in the Psalms and the Pro- 



20 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

ALLEGORY- 

phets, you have a fine example of an. Allegory." Irving, English 
Composition, p. 189. — V. Metaphor, Myth. 

AMBITION (from ambio, to go about seeking place or power), 
is the desire of power, which is regarded as one of the primary 
or original desires of human nature. See Reid, Act Pow. y 
essay iii., part 2, chap. 2 ; Stewart, Act. Poiv., book L, chap. 
2, sect. 4. 

ARIPHIB01L.OOY (dptptfiohia, ambiguity), is to use a proposi- 
tion which presents not an obscure, but a doubtful or double 
sense. It is enumerated among the sophisms by Aristotle, who 
distinguishes it from equivocatio, opcovvpia, by which he under- 
stands ambiguity in terms taken separately. — V. Fallacy. 

AIWCPHIBOIiY is applied by Kant to that kind of amphibology 
which is natural, and consists in confounding pure notions of 
the understanding with objects of experience, and attributing 
to the one characters and qualities which belong to the other ; 
' as when we make identity, which is a notion a priori, a real 
quality of phenomena, or objects which experience makes 
known to us. — V. Antinomy, Proposition. 

ANALOGUE (duxTioyog, proportionate). — u By an Analogue is 
meant an organ in one animal having the same function as a 
different organ in a different animal. The difference between 
Homologue and Analogue may be illustrated by the wing of a 
bird and that of a butterfly : as the two totally differ in anato- 
mical structure, they cannot be said to be homologous, but they 
Sire analogous in function, since they both serve for flight.' 9 
— M'Cosh, Typical Forms, p. 25. 

In Logic a term is analogous whose single signification ap- 
plies with equal propriety to more than one object — as the leg 
of the table, the leg of the animal. — Whately, Log., b. iii., 
§10. 

ANALOGY (dvothoyia, proportion), has been defined, " The 
similarity of ratios or relations." " But in popular language 
we extend the word to resemblances of things as well as rela- 
tions. Employed as an argument, analogy depends upon the 
canon, the same attributes may be assigned to distinct, but 
similar things, provided they can be shown to accompany the 
points of resemblance in the things, and not the points of differ- 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 21 

ANAIOGY- 

ence." — Thomson, Outlines of Laics of Tliought, p. 363, 1st 
edit. 

" Analog}- does not mean the similarity of two things, but the 
similarity, or sameness of two relations. There must be more 
than two things to give rise to two relations ; there must be at 
least three, and in most cases there are four. Thus A may be 
like B, but there is no analogy between A and B : it is an abuse 
of the word to speak so, and it leads to much confusion of 
thought. If A has the same relation to B which C has to D, 
then there is an analogy. If the first relation be well known, 
it may serve to explain the second, which is less known ; and 
the transfer of name from one of the terms in the relation best 
known to its corresponding term in the other, causes no con- 
fusion, but on the contrary tends to remind us of the similarity 
that exists in these relations, and so assists the mind instead of 
misleading it." — Coplestone, Four Discourses, p. 122, 8vo, 
London, 1821. 

u Analogy implies a difference in sort, and not merely in 
degree ; and it is the sameness of the end with the difference 
of the means which constitutes analogy. IsTo one coidd say the 
lungs of a man were analogous to the lungs of a monkey, but 
any one might say that the gills of a fish and the spiracula of 
insects are analogous to lungs." — Coleridge, Physiology of Life, 
p. 61. 

Between one man and another, as belonging to the same 
genus, there is identity. Between a flint and a flower, as 
belonging to different genera, there is diversity. Between 
the seasons of the year and the periods of human life, or be- 
tween the repose of an animal and the sleep of a plant, when 
we think wherein they agree, without forgetting wherein they 
differ, there is analogy, 

• • When some course of events seems to follow the same 
order with another, so that we may imagine them to be influ- 
enced by similar causes, we say there is an analogy between 
them. And when we infer that a certain event will take place 
in some other case of a similar nature, we are said to reason 
from analogy ; as when we suppose that the stars, like the 
sun, are surrounded with planets, which derive from them 



22 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

ANAIiOOY — 

light and heat. The word analogy is employed with strict 
propriety only in those cases where there is supposed to be a 
sameness in the causes of similar effects. When there is a mere 
similarity in effects or appearances, the word resemblance should 
be used. Resemblances may be well adduced in illustration 
of an argument ; but then they should be proposed merely as 
similes, or metaphors, not as analogies,'''' — Taylor, Elements of 
Thought. 

"The meaning of analogy is resemblance (?), and hence all 
reasoning from one case to others resembling it might be 
termed analogical; but the word is usually confined to cases 
where the resemblance is of a slight or indirect kind. We do 
not say that a man reasons from analogy when he infers that a 
stone projected into the air will fall to the ground. The cir- 
cumstances are so essentially similar to those which have been 
experienced a thousand times, that we call the cases identical, 
not analogical. But when Sir Isaac Newton, reflecting on the 
tendency of bodies at the surface of the earth to the centre, 
inferred that the moon had the same tendency, his reasoning, 
in the first instance, was analogical. 

u By some writers the term has been restricted to the resem- 
blance of relations ; thus knowledge is said to bear the same 
relation to the mind as light to the eye — to enlighten it. But 
although the term is very properly applied to this class of resem- 
blances, I think it is not generally confined to them ; it is com- 
monly used with more latitude, except, indeed, in mathematics, 
when it is employed to designate the identity of ratios." — Sam. 
Bailey, Discourses, p. 181, 8vo, London, 1852. 

"As analogy is the resemblance of ratios (or relations), two 
things may be connected by analogy, though they have in 
themselves no resemblance ; thus as a sweet taste gratifies the 
palate, so does a sweet sound gratify the ear, and hence the 
same word, c sweet, ' is applied to both, though no flavour can 
resemble a sound in itself. To bear this in mind would serve 
to guard us against two very common errors in the interpreta- 
tion of the analogical language of Scripture : — 1. The error of 
supposing the things themselves to be similar, from their 
bearing similar relation to other things ; 2. The still more 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 23 

AMLOGY- 

common error of supposing the analogy to extend farther than 
it does, or to be more complete than it really is, from not con- 
sidering in ivhat the analogy in each case consists " — Whately. 
" Analogy is a Greek word used by mathematicians to signify 
a similitude of proportions. For instance, when we observe 
that two is to six as three is to nine, this similitude or equality 
of proportion is termed analogy. And although proportion 
strictly signifies the habitude or relation of one quantity to 
another, yet, in a looser and translated sense, it hath been 
applied to signify every other habitude, and consequently the 
term analogy, all similitude of relations or habitudes whatsoever. 
Hence the schoolmen tell us there is analogy between intellect 
and sight ; forasmuch as intellect is to the mind what sight is 
to the body : and that he who governs the state is analogous 
to him who steers a ship. Hence a prince is analogically 
styled a pilot, beiug to the state as a pilot is to his vessel.* 
For the further clearing of this point, it is to be observed, that 
a twofold analogy is distinguished by the schoolmen, metapho- 
rical and proper. Of the first kind there are frequent instances 
in Holy Scripture, attributing human parts and passions to 
God. When He is represented as having a finger, an eye, 
or an ear ; when He is said to repent, to be angry, or 
grieved, every one sees the analogy is merely metaphorical ; 
because these parts and passions, taken in the proper sig- 
nification, must in every degree necessarily, and from the 
formal nature of the thing, include imperfection. When, 
therefore, it is said the finger of God appears in this or that 
event, men of common sense mean no more, but that it is 
as truly ascribed to God, as the works wrought by human 
fingers are to man ; and so of the rest. But the case is differ- 
ent when wisdom and knowledge are attributed to God. 
Passions and senses, as such, imply defect ; but hi knowledge 
simply, or as such, there is no defect. Knowledge, therefore, 
in the proper formal meaning of the word, may be attributed 
to God proportionally, that is, preserving a proportion to the 
infinite nature of God. We may say, therefore, that as God 
is infinitely above man, so is the knowledge of God infinitely 

* Vide Cajetan, de Nbm. Analog., c. iii. 



24 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

ANALOGY— 

above the knowledge of man, and this is what Cajetan calls 
analogia proprie facta. — And after the same analogy we must 
understand all those attributes to belong to the Deity, which 
in themselves simply, and as such, denote perfection." — Ber- 
keley, Min. Philosoph., Dialog. 4. 
Analogy and Metaphor. — Metaphor, in general, is a substitution 
of the idea or conception of one thing with the term belonging to 
it, to stand for another thing, on account of an appearing simili- 
tude only, without any real resemblance and true correspon- 
dency between the things compared ; as when the Psalmist de- 
scribes the verdure and fruitfulness of valleys by laughing and 
singing. Analogy, in general, is the substituting the idea or con- 
ception of one thing to stand for and represent another, on ac- 
count of a true resemblance and correspondent reality in the 
very nature of the things compared. It is defined by Aristotle 
'laoTYig tqv Koyov, an equality or parity of reason, though, in 
strictness and truth, the parity of reasoning is rather built on 
the similitude, and analogy, and consequent to them, than the 
same thing with them. 

" The ground and foundation of Metaphor consists only in 
an appearing or imaginary resemblance and correspondency ; 
as when God is said to have hands, and eyes, and ears. But 
the foundation of analogy is an actual similitude and a real 
correspondency in the very nature of things ; which lays a 
foundation for a parity of reason even between things different 
in nature and kind ; as when God is said to have knowledge, 
power, and goodness. 

"Metaphor is altogether arbitrary, and the result merely of 
imagination, it is rather a figure of speech than a real simili- 
tude and comparison of things ; and, therefore, is properly of 
consideration in rhetoric and poetry. But analogy being built 
on the very nature of things themselves, is a necessary and 
useful method of conception and reasoning ; and, therefore, of 
consideration in Physics and Metaphysics." — Brown, Divine 
Analogy, p. 2. 

" I am not of the mind of those speculators who seem as- 
sured that all states have the same period of infancy, man- 
hood, and decrepitude that are found in individuals. Parallels^ 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 25 

ANAXOGY— 

of this sort rather furnish similitudes to illustrate or to adorn, 
than supply analogies from whence to reason. The objects 
which are attempted to be forced into an analogy are not found 
in the same classes of existence. Individuals are physical 
beings — commonwealths are not physical, but moral essences." 
— Burke, Letters on Regicide Peace, b. iv. 

Many fallacies become current through false metaphorical 
analogies. See an example of false analogy (Butler, Analogy, 
part i., chap. 7), in the supposed likeness between the decay 
of vegetables and of living creatures. 
Analogy and Example. — Analogy is not unfrequently used to 
mean mere similarity. But its specific meaning is similarity of 
relations, and in this consists the difference between the argu- 
ment by example and that by analogy, — that in the one we 
argue from mere similarity, from similarity of relations in the 
other. In the one we argue from Pisistratus to Dionysius, 
who resembles him ; in the other, from the relation of induction 
to demonstration, to the corresponding relation of the example 
to the enthymeme. — Karslake, Aids to Log., vol. ii., p. 74. 
Analogy and Experience. — u Experience is not the mere collec- 
tion of observations ; it is the methodical reduction of them to 
their principles . . . Analogy supposes this, but it goes a step 
farther. Experience is mere analysis, Analogy involves also 
a synthesis. It is applied to cases in which some difference of 
circumstances is supposed ; as, for instance, in arguing from 
the formation of particular parts of one class of animals to the 
correspondence in another, the different nature, habits, circum- 
stances, of the one class, are considered and allowed for, in 
extending the given observation." — Hampden, Introd. Mor. 
Phil., lect. v. 

In the Schools, what was termed the analogy of faith (see 
Rom. xii. 6), was showing that the truth of one scripture is not 
repugnant to the truth of another, or of the whole. u Analogia 
vero est, cum Veritas unius scripturae ostenditur veritati alterius 
non repugnare." — Thorn. Aquinas, Summ. Theolog., pars prima, 
qusest. i., art. 10. 

In Logic, three modes of reasoning are called analogical. 
1. From effect to cause, or from cause to effect. 2. From 



26 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

AIVAJLOOY— 

means to ends, or from ends to means. 3. From mere resem- 
blance or concomitance. Condillac (Art de Raisonner) has 
shown how these modes of reasoning all concur to prove that 
the human beings around us, who are formed like ourselves 
(analogy of resemblance), who act as we act {analogy of cause), 
who have the same organs {analogy of means), should be in all 
respects like ourselves, and have the same faculties. 
Analogy and Induction. — u There are two requisites in order 
to every analogical argument : 1. That the two or several par- 
ticulars concerned in the argument should be known to agree 
in some one point ; for otherwise they could not be referable 
to any one class, and there would consequently be no basis to 
the subsequent inference drawn in the conclusion. 2. That 
the conclusion must be modified by a reference to the circum- 
stances of the particular to which we argue. For herein con- 
sists the essential distinction between an analogical and an in- 
ductive argument" — Hampden, Essay on Phil. Evid. of Chris- 
tianity, pp. 60-64. 

Locke, On Hum. Understand., book iv., chap. 16, sect. 12 ; 
Beattie's Essay on Truth, part i., chap. 2, sect. 7 ; Stewart's 
Elements, vol. ii., chap. 4, sect. 4 ; Stewart's Essays, v., c. 3. 
ANALYSIS and SYNTHESIS (dva, Tiva, avv rifapt, resolutio, 
compositio), or decomposition and recomposition. Objects of 
sense and of thought are presented to us in a complex state, 
but we can only, or at least best, understand what is simple. 
Among the varied objects of a landscape, I behold a tree, I 
separate it from the other objects, I examine separately its 
different parts — trunk, branches, leaves, &c, and then reunit- 
ing them into one whole I form a notion of the tree. The first 
part of this process is analysis, the second is synthesis. If this 
must be done with an individual, it is more necessary with the 
infinitude of objects which surround us, to evolve the one out 
of many, to recall the multitude to unity. We compare objects 
with one another to see wherein they agree ; we next, by a 
synthetical process, infer a general law, or generalize the coin- 
cident qualities, and perform an act of induction which is purely 
a synthetical process, though commonly called analytical. Thus, 
from our experience that bodies attract within certain limits, 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. Zl 

ANAIiTSIS— 

we infer that all bodies gravitate towards each other. The 
antecedent here only says that certain bodies gravitate, the 
consequent says all bodies gravitate. They are brought to- 
gether by the mental insertion of a third proposition, which is, 
•• that nature is uniform." This is not the product of induction, 
but antecedent to all induction. The statement fully expressed 
is. this and that body, which we know, gravitate, but nature is 
uniform : this and that body represent all bodies — all bodies 
gravitate. It is the mind which connects these things, and the 
process is synthetical. This is the one ivniversal method in all 
philosophy, and different schools have differed only in the way 
of employing it. Method is the following of one thing through 
another. Order is the following of one thing after another. 
Analysis is real, as when a chemist separates two substances. 
:>:iL as when we consider the properties of the sides and 
angles of a triangle separately, though we cannot think of a 
triangle without sides and angles. 

For an explanation of the processes of analysis and synthesis, 
see Stewart, Elements, part ii.. chap. 4. 

The instruments of analysis are observation and experiment ; 
of > inition and classification. 

Take down a watch, analysis; put it up, synthesis. — Lord 
Brougham, Prelimin. Discourse, part i.. sect. 7. 

"Hoc analysi liceoit, ex rebus compositis ratiocinatione col- 

; simpUces : ex motibus, vires moventes ; et in universum. ex 

effectis causas ; ex causisque particular ibus generates ; donee ad 

generalissimos tandem sit deventum." —~Sev?ton, Optices, 2d edit-, 

p. 413. 

Analysis is decomposing what is compound to detect its ele- 
ments. Objects maybe compound, as consisting of several distinct 
parts united, or of several properties equally distinct. In the 
former new, analysis will divide the object into its parts, and 
present them to us successively, and then the relations by which 
they are united. In the second case, analysis will separate the 
distinct properties, and show the relations of every kind which 
may be between them. — Cardaillac, Etudes Element., torn, i., 
pp. - 

Analysis is the resolving into its constituent elements of l 



28 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

ANALYSIS— 

compound heterogeneous substance. Thus, water can be 
analyzed into oxygen and hydrogen, atmospheric air into 
these and azote. — Peemans, Introd. ad Philosophy p. 75, 12mo, 
Lovan., 1840. 

Abstraction is analysis, since it is decomposition, but what 
distinguishes it is that it is exercised upon qualities which by 
themselves have no real existence. Classification is synthesis. 
Induction rests upon analysis. Deduction is a synthetical pro- 
cess- Demonstration includes both. 

ANALYTICS (T* 'AvkKvtmo,) is the title which in the second 
century was given, and which has since continued to be applied, 
to a portion of the Organon or Logic of Aristotle. This por- 
tion consists of two distinct parts ; the First Analytics, which 
teaches how to reduce the syllogism to its diverse figures and 
most simple elements, and the Posterior Analytics, which lays 
down the rules and conditions of demonstration in general. It 
was in imitation of this title that Kant gave the name of Trans- 
cendental Analytic to that part of the Criticism of Pure Reason 
which reduces the faculty of knowing to its elements. 

ANOEIiOIiOCrY (olyyzhog, a messenger; "hoyog, discourse), is the 
doctrine of Angels — V. Pneumatology. 

ANIMA MUNDI (soul of the world). — Animism is the doctrine of 
the anima mundi as held by Stahl. The hypothesis of a force, 
immaterial, but inseparable from matter, and giving to matter 
its form and movement, is coeval with the birth of philosophy. 
Pythagoras obscurely acknowledged such a force, but held that 
there was an infinitely perfect being above it. From Pythag- 
oras it passed into the system of Plato, who could not conceive 
how pure spirit, the seat of eternal ideas, could act directly 
upon matter. He thought also that the world would be more 
perfect if endowed with life. The soul of the world was the 
source of all life, sensibility, and movement. The school of 
Alexandria adhered to the views of Plato, and recognized in- 
telligence and Deity as above the anima mundi, which in the 
system of the Stoics usurped the place of God, and even His 
name ; while Straton of Lampsacus called it nature* The 
hypothesis of the anima mundi was not entertained by the 
scholastic philosophers. But it reappeared under the name of 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 29 

ANIMA MIINM— 

Archceus, in the systems of Cornelius Agrippa, Paracelsus, and 
Van Helmont ; while Henry More recognized a principium 
liylarchicum, and Cudworth a plastic nature, as the universal 
agent of physical phenomena, the cause of all forms of organ- 
ization, and the spring of all the movements of matter. About 
the same time, some German divines, as Amos Comenius, and 
John Bayer, attempted to rest a similar opinion on Genesis i. 
2, and maintained that the spirit which moved on the face of 
the waters still gives life to all nature. — Buddeus, Elem. Phil, 
pars 3, cap. 6, sect. 11, 12, et seq. 

The doctrine of the anima mundi, as held by the Stoics and 
Stratonicians, is closely allied to pantheism ; while according 
to others this soul of the universe is altogether intermediate 
between the Creator and His works. 

See Plato, Timceus, 29 d.— 30 c 

Schelling, De VAme de Monde, 8vo, Hamb., 1809. 
ANTECEDENT (antecedo, to go before). — " And the antecedent 
shall you fynde as true when you rede over my letter as himself 
can not say nay, but that the consecusyon is formal." — Sir T. 
Move's Works, p. 1115. 

In a relation, whether logical or metaphysical, the first term 
is the antecedent, the second the consequent. Thus in the re- 
lation of causality — the cause is the antecedent, and the effect 
the consequent. 

In Logic, antecedent is the former of two propositions, in a 
species of reasoning, which, without the intervention of any 
middle proposition, leads directly to a fair conclusion ; and this 
conclusion is termed the consequent. Thus, I reflect, therefore 
I exist. I reflect, is the antecedent — therefore I exist, is the 
consequent — Euler, Letters to a German Princess, 

Antecedent is that part of a conditional proposition on which 
the other depends." — Whately, Log., b. ii., chap. 4, § 6- 

In Grammar the word to which the relative refers is called 
the antecedent', as, M God whom we worship," — where God is 
the antecedent, to which ivhom the relative refers. 
ANTHROPOLOGY (oLvQ%a>7?og and hoyo;, the science of man). — 
Among naturalists it means the natural history of the human 
species. According to Dr. Latham (Nat Hist of Varieties of 



30 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

ANTHBOPOLOGY- 

Man, Lond., 1830), anthropology determines the relations of 
man to the other mammalia ; ethnology, the relations of the 
different varieties of mankind to each other, p. 559. The 
German philosophers since the time of Kant have used it to 
designate all the sciences which in any point of view relate to 
man — soul and body — individual and species — facts of history 
and phenomena of consciousness — the absolute rules of morality 
as well as interests material, and changing; so that works 
under the general title of anthropology treat of very different 
topics. 

" Anthropology is the science of man in all his natural varia- 
tions. It deals with the mental peculiarities which belong 
specifically to different races, ages, sexes, and temperaments, 
together with the results which follow immediately from them 
in their application to human life. Under psychology, on the 
other hand, we include nothing but what is common to all man- 
kind, and forms an essential part of human nature. The one, 
accordingly, may be termed the science of mental variables ; 
the other, the science of mental constants" — Morell, Psychol- 
ogy, pp. 1, 2. 

In an anonymous work entitled Anthropologic Abstracted, 
8vo, Lond., 1655, Anthropology is divided into Psychology and 
Anatomy. 
ANTHROPOMORPHISM (uvfyanog, man ; ^o^^, form).— u It 
was the opinion of the Anthropomorphites that God had all the 
parts of a man, and that we are, in this sense, made according 
to his image." — More, Def. of Cabbala, c. 1. 

Melito, of Sardis, was the first Christian writer who ascribed 
body to Deity. The ascribing of bodily parts or members to 
Deity is too gross a delusion to call for refutation. It is wit- 
tily exposed by Cicero, Be Nat. Deor., lib. L, cap. 27. But 
there is a spiritual anthropomorphism, sometimes also called 
anthropopathy, which ascribes to him the acts, passions, senti- 
ments, and proceedings of human nature. 

" We ought not to imagine that God is clothed with a hu- 
man body, as the Anthropomorphites asserted, under colour 
that that figure was the most perfect of any." — Malebranche, 
Search after Truth, book iii., chap. 9. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY, 31 

ANTHROPOMORPHISM— 

Hunie applies the name to those who think the mind of God 
is like the mind of man. 

u When it is asked, what cause produces order in the ideas 
of the Supreme Being, can any other reason be assigned by you 
Antliropomorpliites, than that it is a rational faculty, and that 
such is the nature of Deity?" — Dialogues on Nat. Relig., 
parts iv., v. 
ANTICIPATION (anticipation w^oAs^/^), is a term which was 
first used by Epicurus to denote a general notion which enables 
us to conceive beforehand of an object which had not yet come 
under the cognizance of the senses. But these general notions 
being formed by abstraction from a multitude of particular 
notions, were all originally owing to sensation, or mere gener- 
alizations a posteriori. Buhle {Hist, de la Phil. Mod., torn. i # , 
pp. 87, 88) gives the following account: — u The impressions 
which objects make on the senses, leave in the mind traces 
which enable us to recognize these objects when they present 
themselves anew, or to compare them with others, or to dis- 
tinguish them. When we see an animal for the first time, the 
impression made on the senses leaves a trace which serves as a 
type. If we afterwards see the same animal, we refer the im- 
pression to the type already existing in the mind. This type 
and the relation of the new impression to it, constituted what 
Epicurus called the anticipation of an idea. It was by this 
anticipation that we could determine the identity, the resem- 
blance or the difference of objects actually before us, and those 
formerly observed." 

The language of Cicero (De Nat Deor., lib. i., cap. 16) 
seems to indicate that by Epicurus the term n%6'hri$i$ was 
extended to what is supersensual, and included what is now 
called knowledge a priori. " Quae est enim gens, aut quod 
genus hominum, quod non liabeat, sine doctrina, anticipationem 
quandam Deorum? quam apellat n^'kr^iy Epicurus, id est, 
anteceptam animo rei quandam informationem, sine qua nee 
intelligi quidqiiam, nee quceri, nee disputari potest." And 
according to Diogenes Laertius (lib. vii., sect. 51, 53, 51), the 
Stoics defined K^oArrJ/is to mean "a natural conception of the 
universal." It would appear, however, that this definition was 



32 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

ANT ICIPATION— 

not adopted by all. And Sir William Hamilton has said 
(Reid's Works, note A, p. 774): — "It is not to be supposed 
that the xoivoil 'iwoioct, (pvaix.oi\ ngo'hyjxpstg, of the Stoics, far less 
of the Epicureans, were more than generalizations a posteriori. 
Yet this is a mistake, into which, among many others, Lipsius 
and Leibnitz have fallen in regard to the former." See Man- 
uductio ad Stoicam Phil, lib. ii., dissert. 11 ; and Leibnitz, 
Nouveaux Essais, Pref. See also Kernius, Dissert, in Epicuri 
K^ohvi'tyiv, &c, Goett., 1736. 
Anticipation of Nature is a phrase employed by Lord Bacon to 
denote a hasty and illicit generalization, as opposed to a due 
and gradual generalization, which he called an Interpretation 
of Nature. — Pref. to Nov. Organ. 
ANTINOMY (dyTt, against ; vopog, law), the opposition of one law 
or rule to another law or rule. 

"If He once willed adultery should be sinful, all His omni- 
potence will not allow Him to will the allowance that His 
holiest people might, as it were, by His own antinomy or 
counter statute, live unreproved in the same fact as He 
Himself esteemed it, according to our common explainers." — 
Milton, Doct. and Disc, of Div., b. ii., c. 3. 

According to Kant, it means that natural contradiction 
which results from the law of reason, when, passing the limits 
of experience, we seek to know the absolute. Then, we do 
not attain the idea of the absolute, or we overstep the limits 
of our faculties, which reach only to phenomena. 

If the world be regarded not as a phenomenon or sum of 
phenomena, but as an absolute thing in itself, the following 
Antinomies or counter-statements, equally capable of being 
supported by arguments, arise : — 



Thesis. I. 

The world has an origin in time, and The world has no beginning and 
is quoad space shut up in boundaries. no bounds. 

II. 
Every compound substance in the No composite consists of simple 
world consists of simple parts; and parts; and there exists nowhat simple 
there is nothing but the simple, or in the world, 
that which is compounded from it. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 33 

ANTINOMY— 

III. 

Thesis. Antithesis. 

It is requisite to assume a Free There is no Freedom. Everything 
causality to explain the phenomena in the world happens according to the 
of the world. laws of nature. 

IV. 

To the world there belongs some- There exists no absolutely necessary 
what which, either as its part or its Being, neither in the world nor out of 
cause, is an absolutely necessary being, the world, as its cause. 

At the bottom of the two first antinomies lies the absurdity 
of transferring to the world in itself predicates which can be 
applied only to a world of phenomena. We get rid of the 
difficulty by declaring that both thesis and antithesis are false. 
With regard to the third, an act may be in respect of the causa- 
lity of reason a first beginning, while yet, in respect of the 
sequences of phenomena, it is no more than a subordinate 
commencement, and so be, in the first respect free ; but in the 
second, as mere phenomenon, fettered by the law of the causal 
nexus. The fourth antinomy is explained in the same manner ; 
for when the cause qua phenomenon is contradistinguished from 
the cause of phenomena, so far forth as this last may be a thing 
in itself, then both propositions may consist together. — Semple, 
Introd. to Metaphysic of Ethics, p. 95. 

Others think that when the principles are carefully inducted 
and expressed, the contradiction disappears. — M'Cosh, Meth. 
of Div. Govern., p. 530, 5th edit. 
ANTIPATHY (aLvri 7ra.Qo;, feeling against). — " There are many 
ancient and received traditions and observations touching the 
sympathy and antipathy of plants ; for that some will thrive 
best growing near others, which they impute to sympathy, and 
some worse, which they impute to antipathy.' 1 — Bacon, Nat. 
Hist., sect. 479- 

According to Sylvester Rattray, M.D. (Aditus Novus ad 
Occidtas Sympathice et Antipathies causas inveniendas. 12mo, 
Glasg., 1658,) there is antipathy and sympathy not only 
between plants, but also between minerals and animals. 

A blind and instinctive movement, which, without any 

D 



34 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

ANTIPATHY— 

appreciable reason, makes us averse to the company or char- 
acter of some persons at first sight. An involuntary dislike 
or aversion entertained by an animate being to some sensible 
object. A man may have an antipathy to particular smells or 
tastes, a turkey cock or bull to the colour red, a horse to the 
smell of raw flesh. Some are natural, others are acquired, as 
a surfeit of any food gives antipathy. Some are founded on 
sensation, others on sentiment.' — Locke, On Hum. Understand., 
book ii., chap. 33, sect. 7, 8. — V. Sympathy. 

A PARTE? ANTE, and A PARTE POST. — These two expres- 
sions, borrowed from the scholastic philosophy, refer to 
eternity ; of which man can only conceive as consisting of two 
parts ; the one without limits in the past, a parte ante ; and 
the other without limits in the future, a parte post. Both are 
predicable of Deity ; only the latter of the human soul — V. 
Eternity. 

APATHY (#, privative; and noiQog, passion). — The absence of 
passion. u What is called by the Stoics apathy, or dispassion ; 
by the Sceptics in disturbance, dret^et^iet ; by the Molinists, 
quietism ; by common men, peace of conscience : seem all to 
mean but great tranquillity of mind." — Sir W. Temple, Of 
Gardening. 

As the passions are the springs of most of our actions, a 
state of apathy has come to signify a sort of moral inertia — 
the absence of all activity or energy. According to the Stoics, 
apathy meant the extinction of the passions by the ascendancy 
of reason. 

u By the perfect apathy which that philosophy (the Stoical) 
prescribes to us, by endeavouring not merely to moderate but 
to eradicate, all our private, partial, and selfish affections, by 
suffering us to feel for whatever can befall ourselves, our 
friends, our country, not even the sympathetic and reduced 
passions of the impartial spectator, — it endeavours to render 
us altogether indifferent and unconcerned in the success or 
miscarriage of everything which nature has prescribed to us 
as the proper business and occupation of our lives." — Smith, 
Theory of Moral Sentiments, part vii., sect. 2. 
"In general, experience will show, that as the wants of 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 35 

APATHY— 

natural appetite to food supposes and proceeds from some 
natural disease ; so the apathy the Stoics talk of, as much 
supposes or is accompanied with something amiss in the moral 
character, in that which is the health of the mind." — Butler, 
Sermon v. 

" In lazy apathy let Stoics boast 
Their virtue fix'd; 'tis fix'd as in a frost; 
Contracted all, retiring to the breast ; 
But strength of mind is exercise, not rest"— Pope. 

Xiemeierus (J oh. Barth.), Dissert de Stoicorum Awdilleioc, 
&e. 4to, Helmst, 1679. 

Becnius, Dispp., libb. 3, Avafeix Sapientis Stoici. 4to, 
Copenhag., 1693. 

Fischerus (John Hen.), Diss, de Stoieis oLv&faictg /also 
suspectis. 4to, Leips., 1716. 

Quadius, Disputatio tritum illud Stoicorum paradoxon nt^l 
7% dvotQsiotg expendens. 4to, Sedini, 1720. 

Meiners, Melanges, torn, ii., p. 130. 
APHORISUI, determinate position, from dtpo^'t^a, to bound, or 
limit; whence our horizon. — Coleridge, Aids to Reflection, vol. 
i., p. 16, edit. 1848 : M In order to get the full sense of a word, 
we should first present to our minds the visual image that 
forms its primary meaning. Draw lines of different colours 
round the different counties of England, and then cut out 
each separately, as in the common play-maps that children 
take to pieces and put together, so that each district can be 
contemplated apart from the rest, as a whole in itself. This 
twofold act of circumscribing and detaching, when it is exerted 
by the mind on subjects of reflection and reason, is to aphorize, 
and the result an aphorism." 

A precise, sententious saying; e. g., "It is always safe to 
learn from our enemies, seldom safe to instruct even our 
friends." 

Like Hippocrates, Boerhaave has written a book entitled 
Aphorisms, containing medical maxims, not treated argumenta- 
tively, but laid down as certain truths. In civil law aphorisms 
are also used. 

The three ancient commentators upon Hippocrates, viz., 



36 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

APHORISM— 

Theophilus, Meletius, and Stephanus, have given the same 
definition of an aphorism, i. e., u a succinct saying, compre- 
hending a complete statement," or a saying poor in expression, 
but rich in sentiment. The first aphorism of Hippocrates is, 
4 c Life is short, and the art is long; the occasion fleeting; 
experience fallacious, and judgment difficult. The physician 
must not only be prepared to do what is right himself, but 
also to make the patient, the attendants, and externals, co- 
operate." 

" The first and most ancient inquirers into truth were wont 
to throw their knowledge into aphorisms, or short, scattered, 
unmethodical sentences." — Nov. Organ., book i., sect. 86. 
And the Novum Organum itself is written in aphorisms. 

Heraclitus is known by his aphorisms, which are among the 
most brilliant of those 

w Jewels, five words long, 
That on the stretched fore-linger of all time, 
Sparkle for ever." 

Among the most famous are, — War is father of all things, 
i. e., all things are evolved by antagonistic force. No man 
can bathe twice in the same stream, i. e., all things are in 
perpetual flux. 
APOIJEICTIC, AP© DEICTIC AL (dirohUi/vpt, to show). — 
"The argumentation is from a similitude, therefore not apodic- 
ticlc, or of evident demonstration." — Robinson, Eudoxa, p. 23. 

This term was borrowed by Kant from Aristotle (Analyt. 
Prior., lib. i., cap. 1). He made a distinction between propo- 
sitions which admitted of contradiction or dialectic discussion, 
and such as were the basis or result of demonstration. Kant 
wished to introduce an analogous distinction between our 
judgments, and to give the name of apodeictic to such as 
were above all contradiction. 
APOJLOGUE {oc7ro7^oyog, fahuld), " a novel story, contrived to 
teach some moral truth." — Johnson. 

" It would be a high relief to hear an apologue or fable well 
told, and with such humour as to need no sententious moral at 
the end to make the application." — (Shaftesbury, vol. iii., 
Miscell. 4, c. 1.) It is essential to an apologue that the circum- 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 37 

APOLOGUE- 

stances told in it should be fictitious. The difference between 
a parable and an apologue is, that the former being drawn from 
human life requires probability in the narration ; whereas the 
apologue being taken from inanimate things or the inferior 
animals, is not confined strictly to probability. The fables of 
JEsop are apologues. 

For an admirable instance of the Tioyog or apologue, see 
Coleridge's Friend, where the case of the seizure of the Danish 
fleet by the English is represented in this form. 
APOLOGY (diro'koyioi, a defence made in a court of justice). — 
We have a work of Xenophon, entitled the Apology of Socrates, 
and another with the same title by Plato. The term was 
adopted by the Christian fathers, and applied to their writings 
in defence of Christianity, and in answer to its opponents. 
About the year 125, Quadratus and Aristides presented Apolo- 
gies to the Emperor Hadrian when on a visit to Athens. Ter- 
tullian addressed his Apologetic to the magistrates of Rome, 
the Emperor Severus being then absent. 
APOPHTHEGM («5ro@0«yyo^«/, to speak out plainly). — A short 
and pithy speech or saying of some celebrated man ; as that of 
Augustus, Festina lente. 

"In a numerous collection of our Saviour's apophthegms, 
there is not to be found one example of sophistry." — Paley, 
Evidences, part ii., c. 2. 

The Lacedsemonians used much this mode of speaking. 
Plutarch has a collection entitled the Apophthegms of Kings and 
Generals, many of which are anecdotes ; and also another 
entitled Laconica. Drusius (Joan. Prof. Heb. Lugd. Bat.) 
published in 1612, a collection of Hebrew and Arabic Apoph- 
thegms. Erasmus has a collection of Apophthegms, 12mo, Basil, 
1558. 

u Of Blackmore's (Sir Richard) attainments in the ancient 
tongues, it may be sufficient to say that in his prose, he has 
confounded an aphorism with an apophthegm^ — Macaulay, On 
Addison, p. 11. 

In Guesses at Truth (2d series, 1848), the saying of Demos- 
thenes, " that action was the first, second, and third essential 
of eloquence," is called an apophthegm. 



38 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

APPERCEPTION (Self- consciousness). — u By apperception he 
(Leibnitz) understands that degree of perception which reflects 
as it were upon itself ; by which we are conscious of our own 
existence, and conscious of our perceptions, by which we can 
reflect upon the operation of our own minds, and can com- 
prehend abstract truths." — Reid, Intell. Pow., essay ii., c. 15. 

By apperception the Leibnitzio-Wolfians meant the act by 
which the mind is conscious immediately of the representative 
object, and through it, mediately of the remote object repre- 
sented." — Sir Will. Hamilton, Relets Works, note d*, sect. 1. 

Apperception according to Kant is consciousness of one's 
self, or the simple representation of the I. If a subject 
capable of representations possesses such, it, besides, always 
connects with these representations that it (the subject) has 
them. This second representation, that I, the representing 
subject, has these representations, is called the consciousness 
of myself, or the apperception. This representation is simple, 
and is an effect of the understanding, which thereby connects 
all the diversity of a representation in a single representation, 
or, according to Kant's mode of expression, produces a syn- 
thesis." — Haywood, Critick of Pure Reason, -p. 592. 

"The term consciousness denotes a state, apperception an 
act of the ego ; and from this alone the superiority of the 
latter is apparent." — Meiklejohn, Criticism of Pure Reason, 
note, p. 81. 

" Cousin maintains that the soul possesses a mode of spon- 
taneous thought, into which volition and reflection, and there- 
fore personality, do not enter, and which gives her an intuition 
of the absolute. For this he has appropriated the name apper- 
ception, explaining it also as a true inspiration, and holding 
therefore, that inspirations come to man, not by the special 
volitions of God, as commonly believed, but fall to reason in 
its own right, thus constituting a scientific organ of discovery." 
— Mac Vicar, Enquiry into Human Nature, 8vo, Edin., 1853, 
p. 216. 
APPETITE. — "The word appetitus, from which that of appetite 
is derived, is applied by the Romans and the Latinists to de- 
sires in general, whether they primarily relate to the body or 
not, and with obvious propriety ; for the primitive signification 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 39 

APPETITE— 

is the seeking after whatever may conduce either to gratifica- 
tion or happiness. Thus Cicero observes, 4 Motus animorum 
duplices sunt ; alteri, cogitationis ; alteri, appetitus, Cogitatio 
in vera exquirendo maxime versatur ; appetitus irnpellit ad agen- 
dum.'' By two powers of action being thus placed in contrast 
with each other, and the one applied to thought simply, it is 
obvious that the other comprehends every species of desire, 
whether of a mental or corporeal nature. Metaphysicians also, 
who have written in the Latin language, use the word appe- 
titus in the same latitude." — Cogan, On the Passions, vol. i., 
p. 15. 

In modern use, appetites refer to corporeal wants, each of 
which creates its correspondent desire. But desire proper refers 
to mental objects 

" The word appetite, in common language, often means 
hunger, and sometimes figuratively any strong desire." — 
Beattie, Mor. Science, part i., c. 1. 

As our perceptions are external, which are common to us 
with the brutes; and internal, which are proper to us as 
rational beings — so appetite is sensitive and rational. The sen- 
sitive appetite was distinguished into the irascible and the 
concupiscible. — Eeid, Act. Poiv., essay iii. ; Stewart, Act. Pow., 
vol. i., p. 14. 
Appetite and instinct. — "Appetites have been called instinctive, 
because they seek their own gratification without the aid of 
reason, and often in spite of it. They are common to man 
with the brute ; but they differ at least in one important respect 
from those instincts of the lower animals which are usually 
contrasted with human reason. The objects towards which 
they are directed are prized for their own sake ; they are 
sought as ends, while instinct teaches brutes to do many things 
which are needed only as means for the attainment of some 
ulterior purpose. Thus instinct enables a spider to entrap his 
prey, while appetite only leads him to devour it when in his 
possession. 

" Instinct is an impulse conceived without instruction, and 
prior to all experience, to perform certain acts, which are not 
needed for the immediate gratification of the agent, which, in 



40 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

APPETITE— 

fact, are often opposed to it, and are useful only as means for 
the accomplishment of some ulterior object ; and this object is 
usually one of pre-eminent utility or necessity, either for the 
preservation of the animal's own life, or for the continuance of 
its species. The former quality separates it from intelligence, 
properly so called, which proceeds only by experience or in- 
struction ; and the latter is its peculiar trait as distinguished 
from appetite, which in strictness, uses no means at all, but 
looks only to ends." — Bowen, Lowell Lect., 1849, p. 228. 
APPREHENSION (apprehendo, to lay hold of). — " By the appre- 
hensive power, we perceive the species of sensible things, pre- 
sent or absent, and retain them as wax doth the print of a 
seal." — Burton, Anat. of Melancholy, p. 21. 

Here it includes not only conception or imagination, but 
also memory or retention. 

" How can he but be moved willingly to serve God, who 
hath an apprehension of God's merciful design to save him !" — 
Barrow, Serm. xlii. 

u It may be true, perhaps, that the generality of the negro 
slaves are extremely dull of apprehension and slow of under- 
standing." — Porteous, On Civilization of Slaves. 

Apprehension in Logic, is that act or condition of the mind 
in which it receives a notion of any object ; and which is ana- 
logous to the perception of the senses. Incomplex apprehension 
regards one object, or several, without any relation being per- 
ceived between them, as a man, a card, &c. Complex apprehension 
regards several objects with such a relation, as a man on horse- 
back, a pack of cards, &c. — Whately, Log., b. ii., ch. 1, § 1. 

u Apprehension is the Kantian word for perception, in the 
largest sense in which we employ that term. It is the genus 
which includes under it, as species, perception proper and sen- 
sation proper." — Meiklejohn, Criticism of Pure Reason, note, 
p. 127. 
Apprehend and Comprehend. — " We apprehend many truths 
which Tve do not comprehend. The great mysteries of our 
faith, the doctrine, for instance, of the Holy Trinity — we lay 
hold upon it (ad prehendo), we hang upon it, our souls live by 
it ; but we do not take it all in, we do not comprehend it ; for 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 41 

APPREHENSION— 

it is a necessary attribute of God that He is incomprehensible ; 
if He were not so He would not be God, or the being that 
comprehended Him would be God also. But it also belongs 
to the idea of God that He may be l apprehended, 1 though not 
• comprehended' by His reasonable creatures: He has made 
them to know Him. though not to know Him all. to ; apprehend ' 
though not to ' comprehend ' Him." — Trench, On Study of 
Words, p. 110. 12mo, Loud.. 1851. 

APPROBATION (Hani) includes a judgment of an action as right, 
and a feeling favourable to the agent. The judgment precedes 
and the feeling follows. But in some cases the feeling pre- 
dominates : and in others the judgment is more prominent. 
Hence some have resolved an exercise of the moral faculty 
into an act of the reason : while others woidd refer it altogether 
to the sensibility. But both the judgment and the feeling- 
should be taken into account. — See Manual of Mot. Phil, p. 
102 : Keicl, Act. Poic. essay v.. ch. 7. 

A PRIORI aud A POSTERIORI. — "There are two general 
ways of reasoning, termed arguments a priori and a posteriori. 
or according to what is usually styled the synthetic and analytic 
method : the one lays down some previous, self-evident prin- 
ciples : and in the next place, descends to the several conse- 
quences that may be deduced from them : the other begins 
with a view of the phenomena themselves, traces them to their 
original, and by developing the properties of these phenomena, 
arrives at the knowledge of the cause." — King. Essay on Evil 
Pref., p. 9. 

By an a priori argument a conclusion is drawn from an ante- 
cedent fact, whether the consequence be in the order of time 
or in the necessary relation of cause and effect. By the argu- 
ment a posteriori we reason from what is consequent in the 
order of time to what is antecedent, or from effect to cause. 
An individual may fall under suspicion of murder for two 
reasons : he may have coveted the deceased's property, or he 
may be found with it in his possession ; the former is an a 
priori, the latter an a posteriori argument against him. 

u Of demonstrations there are two sorts: demonstrations 
a priori, when we argue from the cause to the effect : and h 



42 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

A PRIORI— 

posteriori, when we argue from the effect to the cause. Thus 
when we argue from the ideas we have of immensity, eternity, 
necessary existence, and the like, that such perfections can 
reside but in one being, and thence conclude that there can be 
but one supreme God, who is the cause and author of all 
things, and that therefore it is contradictory to this to suppose 
that there can be two necessary independent principles, the 
one the cause of all the good, and the other the cause of all the 
evil that is in the world ; this is an argument a priori. Again, 
when the Manicheans and Paulicians, from what they observe 
in things and facts, from the many natural evils which they see 
in the world, and the many moral wickednesses which are 
committed by men, conclude that there must be two different 
causes or principles from whence each of these proceed ; this 
is arguing a posteriori.'' 1 — -Dr. John Clark, Enquiry into Evil, 
pp. 31-2. 

" The term a priori, by the influence of Kant and his school, 
is now very generally employed to characterize those elements 
of knowledge which are not obtained a posteriori— 2xz not , 
evolved out of factitious generalizations ; but which as native 
to, are potentially in, the mind antecedent to the act of ex- 
perience, on occasion of which (as constituting its subjective 
condition) they are first actually elicited into consciousness. 
Previously to Kant the terms a priori and a posteriori were, 
in a sense which descended from Aristotle, properly and usually 
employed — the former to denote a reasoning from cause to 
effect — the latter a reasoning from effect to cause. The term 
a priori came, howerer, in modern times, to be extended to 
any abstract reasoning from a given notion to the conditions 
which such a notion involved ; hence, for example, the title a 
priori bestowed on the ontological and cosmological arguments 
for the existence of the Deity. The latter of these, in fact, 
starts from experience — from the observed contingency of the 
world, in order to construct the supposed notion on which it 
founds. Clarke's cosmological demonstration called a priori, 
is therefore, so far, properly an argument a posteriori.' 11 — Sir 
W. Hamilton, Reid's Works, p. 762. 

" By knowledge a priori, 11 says Kant (Criticism of Pure 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 43 

A PRIORI— 

Reason, Introd., § 1), u we shall in the sequel understand, 
not such as is independent of this or that kind of experience, 
but such as is absolutely so of all experience. Opposed to this 
is empirical knowledge, or that which is possible only a pos- 
teriori, that is, through experience. Knowledge a priori is 
either pure or impure. Pure knowledge a priori is that with 
which no empirical element is mixed up. For example, the 
proposition, 'Every change has a cause,' is a proposition a 
priori, but impure because change is a conception which can only 
be derived from experience." 

" We have ordinarily more consideration for the demonstra- 
tion called propter quid or a priori, than for that which we call 
quia or a posteriori ; because the former proceeds from univer- 
sal to particulars, from causes to effects, while the latter pro- 
ceeds in a manner wholly contrary. We must nevertheless see 
whether we have a right to do this ; since no demonstration a 
priori can have credence, or be received, without supposing the 
demonstration a posteriori, by which it must be proved. For 
how is it, for example, that having to prove that man feels, 
from this proposition, every animal feels — how, I say, will you 
establish the truth of this position, should some one hesitate to 
grant it, except by making induction of the individual animals y 
of whom there is not one that does not feel?" — Bernier, 
Abridgment of Gassendi " De VEntendement^ vol. vi., pp. 
340-1. 

u If there are any truths which the mind possesses, whether 
consciously or unconsciously, before and independent of ex- 
perience, they may be called a priori truths, as belonging to it 
prior to all that it acquires from the world around. On the 
other hand, truths which are acquired by observation and ex- 
perience, are called a posteriori truths, because they come to 
the mind after it has become acquainted with external facts. 
How far a priori truths or ideas are possible, is the great cam- 
pus philosophorum, the great controverted question of mental 
philosophy." — Thomson, Outline of Laws of Thought, 2d edit., 
pp. 68-9. — V. Demonstration. 
ARBOR POBPHYBIANA.- In the third century Porphyry 
wrote Efoayayq, or an Introduction to Logic. He represented 



44 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

ARBOR PORPHYRIANA- 

the five predicables under the form of a tree with its trunk and 
branches, and hence the name. By the Greek logicians it 
was called the ladder (xkipcx,%) of Porphyry. A delineation 
of the Arbor Porphyriana is given by Aquinas, Opusc. xlviii., 
tract, ii., cap. 3. 

ARCHUEITS is the name given by Paracelsus to the vital principle 
which presides over the growth and continuation of living 
beings. He called it body; but an astral body, that is an 
emanation from the substance of the stars, which defends us 
against the external agents of destruction till the inevitable 
term of life arrives. The hypothesis was extended by Van 
Helmont to the active principle which presides not only over 
every body, but over every particle of organized body, to which 
it gives its proper form. 

The word is used by More (Antidote to Atheism, pt. i., c. 11,) 
as synonymous with form. 
ARCHEliOGY (*6yos weol rZu oi(>%&>i>) treats of principles, and 
should not be confounded with Archceology (Xoyog srggi rau 
doxotioju), which treats of antiquities or things old. — See 
Alstedius (J. H.), Scientiarum Omnium Encyclopaedia. — V. 
Principle. 

ARCHETYPE (d^x^i ^ rs ^ or chief; and TV7rog, form), a model 
or first form. — " There were other objects of the mind, univer- 
sal, eternal, immutable, which they called intelligible ideas, all 
originally contained in one archetypal mind or understanding, 
and from thence participated by inferior minds or souls." — 
Cudworth, Intell. Syst., p. 387. 

M The first mind is, according to this hypothesis, an archetypal 
world which contains intelligibly all that is contained sensibly 
in our world." — Bolingbroke, Essay iv., sect. 28. 

Cornelius Agrippa gave the name of Archetype to God, con- 
sidered as the absolute model of all being. 

In the philosophy of Locke, the archetypes of our ideas are 
the things really existing out of us. a By real ideas, I mean 
such as have a foundation in nature ; such as have a con- 
formity with the real being and existence of things, or with 
their archetypes" — Essay on Hum. Understand., b. ii., 
c. 30. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 45 

ARCHETYPE — 

" There is truth as well as poetry in the Platonic idea 
things being formed after original archetypes. But we hold 
that these archetypes are not uncreated, as Plato seems to sup- 
pose ; we maintain that they have no necessary or indepen- 
dent existence, but that they are the product of Divine 
wisdom ; and that we can discover a final cause for their pre- 
valence, not, indeed, in the mere convenience and comfort of 
the animal, but in the aid furnished to those created intelli- 
gences who are expected to contemplate and admire their pre- 
determined forms." — M'Cosh, Meth. of Div. Govern., b. ii., 
ch. 1, § 4. 

" Apelles paints a head of Jupiter. The statue of Phidias 
was his archetype, if he paints after it from memory, from idea. 
It was his model, if he paints after it in presence of the statue. 
He paints a likeness, if the resemblance is striking. If he makes 
a second painting in imitation of the first, he takes a copy." — 
Taylor, Synonyms. 
ARCHITECTONICS. — " I understand by an Architectonick the 
art of systems. As the systematic unity is what first of all 
forms the usual cognition into science, that is, from a mere 
aggregate of it forms a system, so is Architectonick the 
doctrine of the Scientific in our cognition in general, and 
belongs therefore necessarily to the doctrine of Method." — 
Kant, Critick of Pare Reason, by Haywood, p. 624. 
AROUMENT (arguo, from d^yog, clear, manifest — to show, reason, 
or prove), is an explanation of that which is doubtful, by that 
which is known. 

Reasoning (or discourse) expressed in words, is Argument. 
Every argument consists of two parts; that which is proved; 
and that by means ofiohich it is proved. The former is called. 
before it is proved, the question; when proved the conclusion 
(or inference) ; that which is used to prove it, if stated last (as 
is often done in common discourse), is called the reason, and is 
introduced by " because," or some other causal conjunction ; 
e g., " Cassar deserved death, because he was a tyrant, and all 
tyrants deserve death." If the conclusion be stated last (which 
is the strict logical form, to which all reasoning may be re- 
duced), then, that which is employed to prove it is called the 



46 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

ARGUMENT— 

premises, and the conclusion is then introdued by some illative 
conjunction, as therefore; e. g., 

u All tyrants deserve death : 
Caesar was a tyrant ; 
Therefore he deserved death." — 

Whately, Log., b. ii., ch. 3, § 2. 
The term argument in ordinary discourse, has several mean- 
ings. — 1. It is used for the premises in contradistinction to the 
conclusion, e. g., " the conclusion which this argument is in- 
tended to establish is," &c. 2. It denotes what is a course or series 
of arguments, as when it is applied to an entire dissertation. 
3. Sometimes a disputation or two trains of argument opposed 
to each other. 4. Lastly, the various forms of stating an ar- 
gument are sometimes spoken of as different kinds of argument, 
as if the same argument were not capable of being stated in 
various ways. — Whately, Log,, Appendix i. 

u In technical propriety argument cannot be used for argu- 
mentation, as Dr. Whately thinks, but exclusively for its middle 
term. In this meaning, the word (though not with uniform 
consistency) was employed by Cicero, Quintilian, Boethius, 
&c. ; it was thus subsequently used by the Latin Aristotelians, 
from whom it passed even to the Eamists ; and this is the 
meaning which the expression always first, and most naturally, 
suggests to a logician." — Sir W. Hamilton, Discussions, p. 147. 
In this sense, the discovery of arguments means the discovery 
of middle terms. 
Argument (The Indirect). — It is opposed to the Ostensive or 
Direct. Of Indirect arguments several kinds are enumerated 
by logicians. 
Argumentuni ad hominem, an appeal to the principles of an 

opponent. 
Argumentum ex concesso, a proof derived from some truth 

already admitted. 
Argumentum a fortiori, the proof of a conclusion deduced from 
that of a less probable supposition that depends upon it. — 
Matthew vi. 30, vii. 1L 
Argumentum ad judicium, an appeal to the common sense of 
mankind. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 47 

Argumentum ad verecundiam, an appeal to our reverence for 
some respected authority. 

Argumentum ad populuni, an appeal to the passions and preju- 
dices of the multitude. 

Argumentum ad ignorautiam, an argument founded on the igno- 
rance of an adversary. 

Reductio ad absiirdiim is the proof of a conclusion derived from 
the absurdity of a contrary supposition. These arguments are 
called Indirect, because the conclusion that is established is not 
the absolute and general one in question, but some other re- 
lative and particular conclusion, which the person is bound to 
admit in order to maintain his consistency. The Reductio ad 
absurdum is the form of argument which more particularly 
comes under this denomination. In geometry this mode of 
reasoning is much employed, by which, instead of demonstrating 
what is asserted, everything which contradicts that assertion is 
shown to be absurd. For, if everything which contradicts a 
proposition is absurd, or unthinkable, the proposition itself 
must be accepted as true. In other sciences, however, which 
do not depend upon definition, nor proceed by demonstration, 
the supposable and the false find a place between what is true 
and what is absurd. 
AROUUIENTATION is opposed to intuition and consciousness, 
and used as synonymous with deduction by Dr. Price (Review, 
chap. 5). 

Argumentation or reasoning is that operation of mind where- 
by we infer one proposition from two or more propositions 
premised.— Watts, Log., Introd. 

Argumentation must not be confounded with reasoning. 
Reasoning may be natural or artificial ; argumentation is always 
artificial. An advocate reasons and argues; a Hottentot reasons, 
but does not argue. Reasoning is occupied with ideas and their 
relations, legitimate or illegitimate ; argumentation has to do 
with forms and their regularity or irregularity. One reasons 
often with one's self; you cannot argue but with two. A thesis 
is set down — you attack, I defend it ; you insist, I reply ; you 
deny, I approve ; you distinguish, I destroy your distinction ; 
your objections and my replies balance or overturn one another. 
Such is argumentation. It supposes that there are two sides, 



48 VOCABULARY OF THILOSOPHY. 

ARGUMENTATION— 

and that both agree to the same rules. — Diet, des Sciences 
Philosoph. 

" Argumentations nomine iota disputatio ipsa comprehenditur, 

constans ex argumento et argumenti confutatione." — Cicero. 

ART (Latin ars, from Greek age-raj, strength or skill ; or from 

a>£<y, to fit, join, or make agree). 

Ars est ratio recta aliquorum operum faciendorum. — Thomas 
Aquinas. 

Ars est habitus cum recta ratione effectivus; quia per precepta 
sua dirigit effectionem seu productionem operis externi sensibilis. 
Differt autem a natura, quod natura operatur in eo in quo est ; 
ars vero nunquam operatur in eo in quo est ; nisi per accidens, 
puta cum medicus seipsum sanat. — Derodon, Phys., p. 21. 

Ars est methodus aliquid juxta regulas determinatas operandi. 
— Bouvier. 

Ars est recta ratio factibilium, atque in eo differt a prudentia, 
quce est recta ratio agibilium. — Peemans, Introd. ad Philosophy 
p. 31. 

Docti rationem artis intelligunt, indocti voluptatem. — Quint. 
This is the difference, in the fine arts especially, between 
acquired knowledge and natural taste. 

"We speak of art as distinguished from nature; but art 
itself is natural to man. ... K we admit that man is 
susceptible of improvement, and has in himself a principle of 
progression and a desire of perfecion, it appears improper to 
say that he has quitted the state of his nature, when he has 
begun to proceed ; or that he finds a station for which he was 
not intended, while, like other animals, he only follows the 
disposition and employs the powers that nature has given. 
The latest efforts of human invention are but a continuation of 
certain devices which were practised in the earliest ages of the 
world, and in the rudest state of mankind." — Ferguson, Essay 
on Hist, of Civ. Soc, pp. 10-13. 

Art is defined by Lord Bacon to be "a proper disposal of 
the things of nature by human thought and experience, so as to 
make them answer the designs and uses of mankind." It may be 
defined more concisely to be the adjustment of means to accom- 
plish a desired end. — Stewart, Works, vol ii., p. 36, last edition. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 49 

ART— 

"Art has in general preceded science. There were bleaching 
and dyeing, and tanning, and artificers in copper and iron, 
before there was chemistry to explain the processes used. 
Men made wine before there was any theory of fermentation ; 
and glass and porcelain were manufactured before the nature 
of alkalies and earths had been determined. The pyramids of 
Nubia and Egypt, the palaces and sculptured slabs of Nineveh, 
the Cyclopean walls of Italy and Greece, the obelisks and 
temples of India, the cromlechs and druidieal circles of coun- 
tries formerly Celtic, all preceded the sciences of mechanics and 
architecture. There was music before there was a science of 
acoustics ; and painting while as yet there was no theory of 
colours and perspective." — M'Cosh, On Div. Govern., p. 151. 

On the other hand, Cicero has said {Be Oratore, i., 41), 
u Nihil est enim, quod: ad artem redigi possit, nisi Me prius qui 
ilia tenet, quorum artem instituere vult, habeat Mam scientiam, ut 
ex its rebus, quarum ars nondum sit, artem efficere possit." 

And Mr. Harris {Phil. Arrangements, chap. 15) has argued 
— " If there were no theorems of science to guide the opera- 
tions of art, there would be no art; but if there were no 
operations of art, there might still be theorems of science. 
Therefore science is prior to arty 

■"The principles which art involves, science evolves. The 
truths on which art depends lurk in the artist's mind unde- 
veloped, guiding his hand, stimulating his invention, balancing 
his judgment, but not appearing in the form of enunciated 
propositions. Art in its earlier stages is anterior to science — it 
may afterwards borrow aid from it." — Whewell, Phil, of 
Induct. Sciences, vol. ii., pp. 111-2, new edit. 

If the knowledge used be merely accumulated experience, 
the art is called empirical ; but if it be experience reasoned 
upon and brought under general principles, it assumes a higher 
character and becomes a scientific art. 

The. difference between art and science is regarded as merely 
verbal by Sir William Hamilton in Edin. Rev., 'No. 115. 

On the other side, see Preface of St. Hilaire's translation of 
the Organon, p. 12 ; Whewell, Phil, of Induct. Sciences, part 
ii., book ii., chap. 8. 



50 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY, 

ART— 

" The distinction between science and art is, that a science is 
a body of principles and deductions, to explain the nature of 
some object matter. An art is a body of precepts with prac- 
tical skill for the completion of some work. A science teaches 
us to know,, an art to do ; the former declares that something 
exists, with the laws and causes which belong to its existence ; 
the latter teaches how something maybe produced."— Thomson, 
Outline of Laws of Thought, p. 16, 2d edit. 

u The object of science is knowledge ; the objects of art are 
works. In art, truth is a means to an end ; in science it is the 
only end. Hence the practical arts are not to be classed 
among the sciences." — Whewell, Phil, of Induct. Sciences-, 
aph. 25. 

" Science gives principles, art gives rules. Science is fixed, 
and its object is intellectual ; art is contingent, and its object 
sensible." — Harris, Dialogue on Art. 
ASCETICISM (jkoxwis, exercise). — The exercise of severe virtue 
among the Pythagoreans and Stoics was so called. It consisted 
in chastity, poverty , watching, fasting, and retirement. 

u The ascetics renounced the business and the pleasures of 
the age ; abjured the use of wine, of flesh, and of marriage, 
chastised the body, mortified their affections, and embraced 
a life of misery, as the price of eternal happiness.' 7 — Gibbo% 
Hist, c. 37. 

This name may be applied to every system which teaches 
man not to govern his wants by subordinating them to reason 
and the law of duty, but to stifle them entirely, or at least to 
resist them as much as we can ; and these are not only the 
wants of the body, but still more those of the heart, the ima- 
gination, and the mind ; for society, the family, most of the 
sciences and arts of civilization, are proscribed sometimes as 
rigorously as physical pleasures. The care of the soul and the 
contemplation of the Deity are the only employments. Ascet- 
icism may be distinguished as religious, which is founded on the 
doctrine of expiation, and seeks to appease the Divine wrath 
by voluntary sufferings, and philosophical, which aims at accom- 
plishing the destiny of the soul, developing its faculties, and 
freeing it from the servitude of sense. — Diet, des Sciences Phil. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 51 

ASCETICISM— 

The principle of asceticism is described by Bentham (Introd. 
to Prin. of Mot. and Legislation, eh. 2), as " that principle 
which approves of actions in proportion as they tend to 
diminish human happiness, and conversely disapproves of them 
as they tend to augment it." But this is not a fair represent- 
ation of asceticism in any of its forms. The only true and 
rational asceticism is temperance or moderation in all 
things. 
ASSENT (ad sentio — to think the same — to be of the same mind 
or opinion). — " Subscription to articles of religion, though no 
more than a declaration of the subscriber's assent, may properly 
enough be considered in connection with the subject of oaths, 
because it is governed by the same rule of interpretation."' — 
Paley, Mor. Phil, b. iii., c. 22. 

Assent is that act of the mind by which we accept as true a 
proposition, a perception, or an idea. It is a necessary part 
of judgment ; for if you take away from judgment affirmation 
or denial, nothing remains but a simple conception without 
logical value, or a proposition which must be examined before 
it can be admitted. It is also implied in perception, which 
would otherwise be a mere phenomenon which the mind had 
not accepted as true. Assent is free when it is not the unavoid- 
able result of evidence, necessary when I cannot withhold it 
without contradicting myself. The Stoics, while they admitted 
that most of our ideas came from without, thought that images 
purely sensible could not be converted into real cognitions 
without a spontaneous act of the mind, which is just assent or 
belief, avyx,ona,Qioi$. — Diet, des Sciences Philosoph. — V. Belief. 
Consent. 

" Assent of the mind to truth is, in all cases, the work not 
of the understanding, but of the reason. Men are not con- 
vinced by syllogisms ; but when they believe a principle, or 
wish to believe, then syllogisms are brought in to prove it." — 
Sewell, Christ. Mor., chap. 21. 

ASSERTION (ad seroj to join to, to declare), in Logic is the 
affirmation or denial of something. — Whately, Log., b. ii.. 
ch. 2, § 1. 

ASSERTORY. — " But whether each of them be according to the 



52 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

ASSERTORY— 

kinds of oaths divided by the schoolmen, one assertory, the 
other promissory, to which some add a third, comminatory, is 
to me unknown." — Fuller, Worthies, Cornwall. 

Judgments have also been distinguished into the problematic, 
the assertory, and the apodeictic. — ■ V. Judgment, Oath. 
ASSOCIATION (associo, to accompany). — u Ideas that in them- 
selves are not all of kin, come to be so united in some men's 
minds, that it is very hard to separate them ; they always keep 
company, and the one no sooner at any time comes into the 
understanding but its associate appears with it." — Locke, On 
Hum. Understand., b. ii., c. 33, sect. 5. — V. Suggestion, 
Train of Thought. 

" If several thoughts, or ideas, or feelings, have been in the 
mind at the same time, afterwards, if one of these thoughts 
return to the mind, some, or all of the others, will frequently 
return with it ; this is called the association of ideas." — Taylor, 
Elements of Thought 

"By the law of continuity, the mind, when the chord has 
once been struck, continues, as Hume describes it, to repeat of 
itself the same note again and again, till it finally dies away. 
By association it falls naturally into the same train of consecu- 
tive ideas to which it has been before accustomed. Imagine a 
glass so constructed that when the face placed before it was 
withdrawn, the image should still continue reflected on it for 
a certain time, becoming fainter and fainter until it finally 
disappeared. This would represent the law of continuity. 
Imagine that when a book and a man had been once placed 
before it together, it should be able, when the book was next 
brought alone, to recall the image of the man also. This 
would be the law of association. On these two laws depends 
the spontaneous activity of the mind."* — Sewell, Christ. Mor., 
ch. 14. 

" The law of association is this, — That empirical ideas which 
often follow each other, create a habit in the mind, whenever 
the one is produced, for the other always to follow." — Kant, 
Anthropology, p. 182. 

" I employ the word association to express the effect which 
* See the use which Butler has made of these in his Analogy \ ch. 1 and ch. 5. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 53 

ASSOCIATION— 

an object derives from ideas, or from feelings which it does 
not necessarily suggest, but which it uniformly recalls to the 
mind, in consequence of early and long continued habits." — 
Stewart, Works, vol. ii., p. 449. 

u Intelligitur per associationem idearum non qucevis naturalis 
et necessaria earundem cowjunctio, sed quce fortuita est, aut per 
consuetudinem vel affectum producitur, qua idece, quce nullum 
naturalem inter se liaoent nexum, ita copidantur, ut recurrente 
una, tota earum catena se conspiciendam intellectui prcebeat." — 
Bruckerus, De Ideis. 

Locke, Essay, book ii., chap. 23 ; Hume, Essays, essay iii. ; 
Hartley, Observ. on Man; Eeid, Intell. Pow., essay iv. ; Stewart, 
Elements, vol. ii., ch. 5; Brown, Lectures, lect. xxxiii. 

u The influence of association upon morals opens an ample 
field of inquiry. It is from this principle that we explain the 
reformation from theft and drunkenness in servants which we 
sometimes see produced by a draught of spirits in which tartar 
emetic had been secretly dissolved. The recollection of the 
pain and sickness excited by the emetic, naturally associates 
itself with the spirits, so as to render them both equally the 
objects of aversion. It is by calling in this principle only that 
we can account for the conduct of Moses in grinding the 
golden calf into a powder, and afterwards dissolving it (pro- 
bably by means of Jiepar sulpliuris) in water, and compelling 
the children of Israel to drink of it as a punishment for their 
idolatry. This mixture is bitter and nauseous in the highest 
degree. An inclination to idolatry, therefore, could not be 
felt without being associated with the remembrance of this 
disagreeable mixture, and of course being rejected with equal 
abhorrence." — Dr. Rush, Medical Enquiries, vol. ii., 8vo, 
Philadelphia, 1793, p. 42. — F. Combination. 
ASSUMPTION (asstimo, to take for granted). — u The unities of 
time and place arise evidently from false assumptions." — 
Johnson, Proposals for, Sfc, Shakxpeare. 

Of enunciations or premises, that which is taken universally 
is called the proposition, that which is less universal and comes 
into the mind secondarily is called the assumption. — Trende- 
lenburg, Notce in ArisU 



54 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

ASSUMPTION— 

The Assumption is the minor or second proposition in a cate- 
gorical syllogism. 
ATHEISM (a, priv. ; and Qeog, God). — The doctrine that there 
is no God. 

"We shall now make diligent search and inquiry, to see 
if we can find any other philosophers who atheized before 
Democritus and Leucippus, as also what form of atheism they 
entertained." — Cud worth, IntelL SysL, p. 111. 

The name Atheist is said to have been first applied to 
Diagoras of Melos (or Delos), a follower of Democritus, who 
explained all things by motion and matter, or the movement 
of material atoms. The other form of atheism in ancient 
times was that of Thales, Anaximenes, and Heraclitus, who 
accounted for all things by the different transformations of the 
one element of water. Straton of Lampsacus rejected the 
purely mechanical system of Democritus, and ascribed to 
matter a power of organization which gave to all beings their 
forms and faculties. Epicurus was the contemporary of 
Straton, but the follower of Democritus, on whose system he 
grafted the morality which is suited to it. And the material- 
ism of Hobbes and others in modern times has, in like manner, 
led to atheism. 

It is a fine observation of Plato in his Laws — that atheism is 
a disease of the soul before it becomes an error of the under- 
standing. 

Leclerc, Hist, des Systemes des Anciens Athees. In Biblio- 
tlieque Choisie. 

" To believe nothing of a designing principle or mind, nor 
any cause, measure, or rule of things but chance, so that in 
nature neither the interest of the whole, nor of any particulars, 
can be said to be in the least designed, pursued, or aimed at, 
is to be a perfect atheists — Shaftesbury, Inquiry Concerning 
Virtue, book L, part i., sect. 2. 

Hi soli sunt athei, qui mundum rectoris sapientis consilio 
negant in initio constitutum fuisse atque in omni tempore ad- 
ministrari. — Hutcheson, Metaphys., pars 3, c. 1. 

Atheists are confounded with Pantheists ; such as Xeno- 
phanes among the ancients, or Spinoza and Schelling among 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 55 

4THEISM- 

ihe moderns, who, instead of denying God, absorb everything 
into Him, and are rather Acosmists. 

Atheism has been distinguished from Antitheism; and the 
former has been supposed to imply merely the non-recognition 
of God,, while the latter asserts His non-existence. This distinc- 
tion is founded on the difference between unbelief and disbelief 
(Chalmers, Nat. Theol, i., 58), and its validity is admitted 
in so far as it discriminates merely between sceptical and dog- 
matic atheism. — Buchanan, Faith in God, vol. i., p. 396. 

u The verdict of the atheist on the doctrine of a God, Is only 

that It is not proven. It is not that it is disproven. He is 

but an atheist. He is not an aniitheist." — Chalmers, ut supra- 

JlTOM, ATOUIISM (*, priv. ; and ?kpv&), to cut, that which 

cannot be cut or divided Is an atom). 

" Now, I say, as Ecphantus and Archelaus asserted the cor- 
poreal world to be made of atoms, jet notwithstanding, held 
an incorporeal deity, distinct from the same as the first principle 
of activity in it, so in like manner did all other ancient atomists 
generally before Democritus join theology and incorporealism 
with their atcmical physiology." — Cudworth, Intell. Syst., p. 26. 

Leucippus considered the basis of all bodies to consist of 
extremely fine particles, differing in form and nature, which he 
supposed to be dispersed throughout space, and to which the 
followers of Epicurus first gave the name of atoms. To these 
atoms he attributed a rectilinear motion, in consequence of 
which, such as are homogeneous united, whilst the lighter were 
dispersed throughout space. 

The doctrine of atomism did not take its rise in Greece, but 
in the East. It is found in the Indian philosophy. Kanada, 
the author of the system, admitted an infinite intelligence 
distinct from the world. But he could not believe matter to 
be Infinitely divisible, as in this case a grain of sand would be 
equal to a mountain, both being infinite. Matter consists, 
then, of ultimate indivisible atoms, which are indestructible and 
eternal. Empedocles and Anaxagoras did not exclude mind 
or spirit from the universe. Leucippus and Democritus did. 
Epicurus added nothing to their doctrine. Lucretius gave to 
it the graces of poetry. 



56 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

ATOM— 

In all its forms, explaining the universe by chance or neces- 
sity, it tends to materialism or atheism, although Gassendi has 
attempted to reconcile it with a belief in God. — Stewart, Act. 
Pow., vol. ii., last edit., 369. — V. Molecule. 
ATTENTION (attendo, to stretch towards). 

" When we see, hear, or think of anything, and feel a desire 
to know more of it, we keep the mind fixed upon the object ; 
this effort of the mind, produced by the desire of knowledge, 
is called attention." — Taylor, 'Elements of Thought. 

Attention is the voluntary, directing of the energy of the 
mind towards an object or an act. It has been said by Sir H. 
Holland {Mental Physiol., p. 14), that " The phrase of direction 
of consciousness might often be advantageously substituted for 
it." It implies Will as distinct from Intelligence and Sensi- 
bility. It is the voluntary direction of the intelligence and 
activity. Condillac confounded it with a sensation of which 
we were passively conscious, all other sensations being as if 
they were not. Laromiguiere regarded it as a faculty, and as 
the primary faculty of the understanding, which gives birth to 
all the rest. But we may do an act with attention as well as 
contemplate an object with attention. And we may attend to 
a feeling as well as to a cognition. According to De Tracy 
{Ideologic, c. 11), it is a state of mind rather than a faculty. 
It is to be acquired and improved by habit* We may learn to 
be attentive as we learn to walk and to write. 

According to Dr. Reid, " Attention is a voluntary act ; it 
requires an active exertion to begin and to continue it ; and it 
may be continued as long as we will \ but consciousness is 
involuntary, and of no continuance, changing with every 
thought." — IntelL Pow., essay i., ch. 5. 

Attention to external things is observation. Attention to the 
subjects of our own consciousness is reflection. 

Attention and abstraction are the same process, it has been 
said, viewed in different relations. They are the positive and 
negative poles of the same act. The one evolves the other. 
Attention is the abstraction of the mind from all things else, 
and fixing it upon one object ; and abstraction is the fixing the 
mind upon one object to the exclusion of others. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 57 

ATTENTION— 

Attention and Thought. — " By thought is here meant the volun- 
tary reproduction in our minds of those states of consciousness, 
to which, as to his best and most authentic documents, the 
teacher of moral or religious truth refers us. In attention, 
we keep the mind passive ; in thought, we rouse it into activity. 
In the former, we submit to an impression — we keep the mind 
steady, in order to receive the stamp. In the latter, we seek 
to imitate the artist, while we ourselves make a copy or dupli- 
cate of his work. We may learn arithmetic or the elements 
of geometry, by continued attention alone ; but self-knowledge, 
or an insight into the laws and constitution of the human mind, 
and the grounds of religion and true morality, in addition 
to the effort of attention, requires the energy of thought.'''' — 
Coleridge, Aids to Reflection, vol. i., p. 4. 
ATTRIBUTE (cittribuo, to apportion, to ascribe), is anything that 
can be predicated of another. 

" Heaven delights 
To pardon erring man ; sweet mercy seems 
Its darling attribute, which limits justice." 

Dry den, All for Lore, 

u Attributes are usually distributed under the three heads of 
quality, quantity, and relation." — Mill, Log., 2d edit., vol. i., 
p. 83.' 

In the Schools, the definition, the genus, the proprium, and 
the accident, were called dialectic attributes; because, accord- 
ing to Aristotle {Topic, lib. L, c. 6), these were the four points 
of view in which any subject of philosophical discussion should 
be viewed. 

" A predicate, the exact limits of which are not determined, 
cannot be used to define and determine a subject. It may be 
called an attribute, and conveys not the whole nature of the 
subject, but some one quality belonging to it. ' Metals are 
heavy,' c some snakes are venomous,' are judgments in which 
this kind of predicable occurs." — Thomson, Outline of Laics of 
Thought, 2d edit., p. 161. 

Attributes (real or metaphysical) are always real qualities, 
essential and inherent, not only in the nature, but even in the 
substance of things. "By this word attribute, 1 ' said Descartes 



58 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

ATTRIBUTE— 

(in his letter to Regius), " is meant something which is 
immovable and inseparable from the essence of its subject, as 
that which constitutes it, and which is thus opposed to mode." 
Thus unity, identity, and activity, are attributes of the soul ; for 
I cannot deny them, without, at the same time, denying the 
existence of the soul itself. Sensibility, liberty, and intelli- 
gence, are but faculties. In God there is nothing but attributes, 
because in God everything is absolute, involved in the sub- 
stance and unity of the necessary being. In Deo non proprie 
modos aut qualitates, sed attributa tantum dicimus esse. — 
Descartes, Princip. Philosophy L, n. 57. 

In man the essential mark is reason — attribute, capacity of 
learning — mode, actual learning — quality, relatively to another 
more or less learned. — Peemans, Introd. ad Philosophy p. 6. — 
V. Quality, Mode. 

AUTHENTIC. — " A genuine book is that which was written by the 
person whose name it bears, as the author of it. An authentic 
book is that which relates matters of fact as they really hap- 
pened. A book may be genuine without being authentic ; and 
a book may be authentic without being genuine. The books 
written by Richardson and Fielding are genuine books, though 
the histories of Clarissa and Tom Jones are fables. . . . 
Anson's voyage may be considered as an authentic book, it 
probably containing a true narrative of the principal events 
recorded in it ; but it is not a genuine book, having not been 
written by Walters, to whom it is ascribed, but by Robins." — 
Bp. Watson, Apology for the Bible, p. 33. 

In jurisprudence, those laws or acts are called authentic 
which are promulgated by the proper public officer, and 
accompanied with the conditions requisite to give them faith 
and force. 

AUTHORITY (The principle of ). — u The principle of adopting 
the belief of others, on a matter of opinion, without reference 
to the particular grounds on which the belief may rest." — 
Sir G. C. Lewis, On Authority in Matters of Opinion, p. 6. 
— V. Consent. 
Authority (The argument from). — It is an argument for the 
truth of an opinion that it has been embraced by all men, in 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 59 

AUTHORITY— 

all ages, and in all nations. Quod semper, ubique, et ab 
omnibus, are the marks of universality, according to Vincentius 
Lirinensis. " This word is sometimes employed in its primary 
sense, when we refer to any one's example, testimony, or 
judgment ; as when, e.g., we speak of correcting a reading in 
some book on the authority of an ancient MS., or giving a 
statement of some fact on the authority of such and such 
historians, &c. In this sense the word answers pretty nearly 
to the Latin auctoritas. It is a claim to deference. 

u Sometimes, again, it is employed as equivalent to potestas, 
power, as when we speak of the authority of a magistrate. 
This is a claim to obedience." — Whately, Log., Appendix 1. 

Una in re consentio omnium gentium lex natural putanda est. 
— Cicero, i., Tuscul. 

Multum dare solemus prcesumptioni omnium hominum : Apud 
nos veritatis argumentum est, aliquid omnibus videri. — Seneca, 
Epist. cxvii. 
AUTOCRASY (oivTog, self; and xpocria, to have power). — u The 
Divine will is absolute, it is its own reason, it is both the 
producer and the ground of all its acts. It moves not by 
the external impulse or inclination of objects, but determines 
itself by an absolute autocrasy." — South, vol. vii., ser. x. 

" God extends his dominion even to man's will, that great 
seat of freedom, that with a kind of autocrasy and supremacy 
within itself, commands its own actions, laughs at all com- 
pulsion, scorns restraint, and defies the bondage of human 
laws or external obligations.'' — South, vol. i., ser. vii. — V. 
Autonomy. 
AUTOMATON (xi/Topazou, that which moves of itself.) 

Automatic. — " The difference between an animal and an automatic 
statue consists in this, that in the animal we trace the mechan- 
ism to a certain point, and then we are stopped, either the 
mechanism becoming too subtile for our discernment, or some- 
thing else beside the known laws of mechanism taking place ; 
whereas, in the automaton, for the comparatively few motions 
of which it is capable, we trace the mechanism throughout." — 
Paley, Nat. Theol., c. 3. 

Automatic motions are those muscular actions which ar 



GO VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

AUTOMATON— 

not dependent on the mind, and which are either persistent, or 
take place periodically with a regular rhythm, and are depend- 
ent on normal causes seated in the nerves or central organs of 
the nervous system. "Movements influenced simply by 
sensation, and not at all by the will, are automatic, such as 
winking." — Morell, Psychology, p. 99. 

Leibnitz, torn, i., p. 156, has said, u anima humana est spirit- 
uale quoddam automaton." In a note on this passage, Bilfinger 
is quoted as saying that automaton is derived from ocvrog and 
fixa or |ti««fl, to seek or desire. The soul is a being desiring 
of itself, whose changes are desired by itself; whereas the 
common interpretation of the word is self-moving. The soul, 
in strict propriety, may be called self-desiring, or desiring 
changes of itself, as having the principle of change in itself; 
whereas machines are improperly called self-moving, or self- 
desiring, or willing. 

u By the compound word ccvto^xtov (qtmv ocvto {xoltyiv 
ysvYiroii) Aristotle expresses nature effecting either more or 
less than the specific ends or purposes to which her respective 
operations invariably tend." — Nat. Auseult., lib. ii., cap. 6 ; 
Gillies, Analysis of Aristotle's Works, chap. 2, note. Nature 
operating x«t« avpfisfiYixog, and producing effects not in her 
intention, is called etvTOftoeroit or chance, and art operating 
xutoI avfifafiYiKos, and producing effects not in her intention, is 
called tvx^Ii fortune. Thus, chance or fortune cannot have 
any existence independently of intention or design. 
Automatism is one of the theories as to the activity of matter. 
See Stewart, Act. Pow., vol. ii., pp. 378, 379. 
AUTONOMY (oti/7og vopog, a law itself). — In the philosophy of 
Kant, autonomy is ascribed to the reason in all matters of mo- 
rality. The meaning is, that reason is sovereign, and the laws 
which it imposes on the will are universal and absolute. Man, 
as possessed of reason, is his own lawgiver. In this, according 
to Kant, consists the true character and the only possible proof 
of liberty. The term heteronomy is applied by him to those 
laws which are imposed upon us by nature, or the violence 
done to us by our passions and our wants or desires. — F. 
AUTOCKASY. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 61 

AUTOTHEISTS (011/76^ hog). — Autoiheistaz qui nulla aria entia 
prceter se agnoscunt. — Lacoudre, Instit. Philosophy torn, ii., p. 
120. 
AXIOM (a|«y^«, from d%{6a, to think worthy), a position of 
worth or authority. In science, that which is assumed as the 
basis of demonstration. In mathematics, a self-evident propo- 
sition. 

Diogenes Laertius (Life ofZeno, ch. 48) explains an axiom, 
according to Chrysippus, as meaning a proposition asserting 
or denying something. u It has received the name of axiom, 
cL%i6jp,x, because it is either maintained, d^iovToct, or 
repudiated." 

" There are a sort of propositions, which, under the name 
of maxims and axioms, have passed for principles of science." 
— Locke, On Hum. Understand., book iv., ch. 7. 

" Philosophers give the name of axioms only to self-evident 
truths that are necessary, and are not limited to time and place, 
but must be true at all times and in all places." — Reid, Intell. 
Pow., essay ii., chap. 20 ; see also Sir William Hamilton's 
edition of Reid, note a, sect. 5. 

Mr. Stewart {Elements, part ii., ch. 1) contends that axioms 
are elemental truths necessary in reasoning, but not truths from 
which anything can be deduced. 

That all axioms are intuitive and self-evident truths, is, accord- 
ing to Mr, Tatham (Chart and Scale of Truth, chap. 4), a 
fundamental mistake into which Mr. Locke (Essay, b. iv., chap. 
7, § 1), and others (Ancient Metaphysics, vol. i., b. v., chap. 
3, p. 389, and vol. ii., p. 335), have been betrayed, to the great 
injury of science. All axioms though not intuitive may, how- 
ever, be properly said to be self evident ; because, in their for- 
mation, reason judges by single comparisons without the help 
of a third idea or middle term ; so that they are not indebted 
to any other for their evidence, but have it in themselves ; and 
though inductively framed, they cannot be syllogistically proved. 
— Ibid, chap. 7, sect. 1- 

This term was first applied by mathematicians to a certain 
number of propositions which are self-evident, and serve as the 
basis of all their demonstrations- Aristotle applied it to all self- 
evident principles, which are the grounds of all science (Analyt. 



62 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY, 

AXIOM— 

Post., lib. i., chap. 2). According to him they were all subor- 
dinate to the supreme condition of all demonstration, the prin- 
ciple of identity and contradiction. The Stoics, under the 
name of axioms, included every kind of general proposition, 
whether of necessary or contingent truth. In this sense the 
term is employed by Bacon, who, not satisfied with submitting 
axioms to the test of experience, has distinguished several kinds 
of axioms, some more general than others {Novum Organum 9 
lib. i., aphor. 13, 17, 19, &c) The Cartesians, who wished to 
apply the methods of geometry to philosophy, have retained 
the Aristotelian use of the term. Kant has consecrated it to 
denote those principles which are the grounds of mathe- 
matical science, and which, according to him, are judgments 
absolutely independent of experience, of immediate evidence? 
and which have their origin in the pure intuition of time and 
space. 



BEAUTY. — u All the objects we call beautiful agree in two things^ 
which seem to concur in our sense of beauty. First, When 
they are perceived, or even imagined, they produce a certain 
agreeable emotion or feeling in the mind ; and ? secondly, This 
agreeable emotion is accompanied with an opinion or belief of 
their having some perfection or excellence belonging to them. ,r 
— Keid, IntelL Pow., essay viii., chap. 4. 

Beauty is absolute, real, and ideal The absolutely beautiful 
belongs to Deity. The really beautiful is presented to us in 
the objects of nature and the actions of human life. The 
ideally beautiful is aimed at by art. Plato identified the 
beautiful with the good 7 to xctKov km dy»$6u. But, although 
the ideas of the beautiful, of the good, and of the true are 
related to each other, they are distinct. There may be truth 
and propriety or proportion in beauty — and there is a beauty m 
what is good or right, and also in what is true. But jstiS. 
these ideas are distinct. 

Dr. Huteheson (Inquiry Concerning Beauty, &c.) distinguishes! 
heaitfy into "absolute; or that beauty which we perceive in 



YOCABULAKY OF PHILOSOPHY, 63 

BEAUTY— 

objects without comparison to anything external, of which the 
object is supposed an imitation or picture ; such as that beauty, 
perceived from the works of nature ; and comparative or 
relative beauty, which we perceive in objects, commonly 
considered as imitations or resemblances of something else." 
According to Hutcheson, the general foundation or occasion of 
the ideas of beauty is u uniformity amidst variety ." — Inquiry, 
sect. 2. 

Berkeley, in his Alciphron, and Hume, in many parts of his 
works, made utility the foundation of beauty. But objects 
which are useful are not always beautiful, and objects which are 
beautiful are not always useful. That which is useful is useful 
for some end ; that which is beautiful is beautiful in itself, and 
independent of the pleasure which it gives, or the end it may 
serve. 

On the question whether mental or material objects first give 
us feelings of beauty, see Stewart (Act. Pow., vol. i., p. 279), 
Smith {Theory of Mor. Sent., part iv., chap. 1), and Alison 
(Essay on Taste). 

Dr. Price, in his Review of Principal Questions in Morals, 
sect. 2, has some remarks on natural beauty. See also the ar- 
ticle u Beauty" in the Encyclop. Brit., by Lord Jeffrey ; Karnes, 
Elements of Criticism, vol. i, chap. 3 ; Burke On the Sublime 
and Beautiful; Knight's Enquiry into Principles of Taste; 
Sir Uvedale Price On the Picturesque, with Preface by Sir T. 
D. Lauder, 8vo, Edin., 1842 ; Stewart's Essays, part ii. ; 
Crousaz, Traitede Beau; Andre, Essai snr le Beau. — V. ..Es- 
thetics, Ideal. 
BEINCr (to ovrag ov, that which is, existence). 

" First, thou madest things which should have being without 
life ; then those which should have life and being ; lastly, those 
which have being, life, and reason." — Bishop Hall, Contempt, 
u The Creation." 

" This (being), applies to everything which exists in any way 
whether as substance or accident, whether actually or poten- 
tially, whether in the nature of things, or only in our notions ; 
for, even what we call entia rationis, or fictions of our minds, 
such as hippo-centaur, or mountain of gold, have a being ; even 



64 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

BEING— 

negation or privation have an existence ; nay, according to 
Aristotle,* we can say that nothing has a being. In short, 
whenever we can use the substantive verb is, there must be 
some kind of being." — Monboddo, Ancient Metaphys., book L, 
chap. 4. 

According to some (Diet, des Sciences Philosophy art. "Etre"), 
we can have no idea of nothing ; according to others (Smart, 
Man. of Log., 1849, p. 130), the knowledge of contraries being 
one, if we know what being is, we know what not being is. 
Being is either substance or accident. 
Substance is either matter or mind. 

Accident is divided by the other categories. — V. Ontology. 
BELIEF (that which we live by, or according to, or lief in Ger- 
man belieben, from lubet, that which pleases). 

u The first great instrument of changing our whole nature, 
is a firm belief and a perfect assent to, and hearty entertain- 
ment of the promises of the gospel." — Bp. Taylor, vol. i., 
Ser. xi. 

" Belief assent, conviction, are words which I do not think 
admit of logical definition, because the operation of mind sig- 
nified by them is perfectly simple, and of its own kind. Belief 
must have an object. For he who believes must believe some- 
thing, and that which he believes is the object of his belief 
Belief is always expressed in language by a proposition where- 
in something is affirmed or denied. Belief admits of all degrees, 
from the slightest suspicion to the fullest assurance. There are 
many operations of mind of which it is an essential ingredient, 
as consciousness, perception, remembrance. We give the name 
of evidence to whatever is a ground of belief What this evi- 
dence is, is more easily felt than described. The common 
occasions of life lead us to distinguish evidence into different 
kinds ; such as the evidence of sense, of memory, of conscious- 
ness, of testimony, of axioms, and of reasoning. I am not able 
to find any common nature to which they may all be reduced. 
They seem to me to agree only in this, that they are all fitted 
by nature to produce belief m the human mind, some of them 
in the highest degree, which we call certainty, others in various 
* Metaphys., lib. iv., c. 2. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 65 

BEIilEF— 

degrees according to circumstances." — Reid, Intell. Pow., essay 
ii., chap. 20, and Inquiry, chap. 20, sect. 5. 

"St. Austin accurately says, 'We know what rests upon 
reason ; we believe what rests upon authority.' 1 But reason itself 
must rest at last upon authority ; for the original data of 
reason do not rest upon reason, but are necessarily accepted 
by reason on the authority of what is beyond itself. These 
data are, therefore, in rigid propriety, beliefs or trusts. Thus 
it is, that in the last resort, we must, perforce, philosophically 
admit, that belief is the primary condition of reason, and not 
reason the ultimate ground of belief. We are compelled to 
surrender the proud Intellige ut credas of Abelard, to content 
ourselves with the humble Crede ut intelligas of Anselni." — Sir 
Will. Hamilton, Reid's Works, note a, sect. 5. — V. Feeling, 
Knowledge, Opinion. 

See Guizot, Meditations, &c. Quel est le vrai sens du mot 
Foi, p. 135, 8vo, Paris, 1852. 

To believe is to admit a thing as true, on grounds sufficient, 
subjectively ; insufficient, objectively. — Kant, Crit. de la Rais. 
Prat., p. 11. 

a The word believing has been variously and loosely employed. 
It is frequently used to denote states of consciousness which 
have already their separate and appropriate appellations. Thus 
it is sometimes said, 4 1 believe in my own existence and the 
existence of an external world, I believe in the facts of nature, 
the axioms of geometry, the affections of my own mind,' as 
well as c I believe in the testimony of witnesses, or in the evi- 
dence of historical documents.' " 

" Setting aside this loose application of the term, I propose 
to confine it, First, to the effect on the mind of the premises 
in what is termed probable reasoning, or what I have named 
contingent reasoning — in a word, the premises of all reasoning, 
but that which is demonstrative ; and, Secondly, to the state of 
holding true when that state, far from being the effect of any 
premises discerned by the mind, is dissociated from all evi- 
dence." — Bailey, Letters on Philosophy of Hum. Mind. $\o, 
1851, p. 75. 

11 I propose to restrict the term belief to the assent to propo- 
F 



66 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

BELIEF— 

sitions, and demarcate it from those inferences which are made 
in the presence of objects and have reference to them. I 
would say, we believe in the proposition c Fire burns,' but know 
the fact that the paper about to be thrust into the flame will 
ignite." — Lewes, Biograph. Hist, of Philosophy p 492. 

BENEVOEENCE (benevolentia, well-wishing). — u When our love 
or desire of good goes forth to others, it is termed good- will 
or benevolence.'" — Cogan, On the Passions, part i., chap. 2. 

Bishop Butler has said (Sermon i., On Human Nature), that 
" there are as real and the same kind of indications in human 
nature, that we were made for society and to do good to our 
fellow- creatures, as that we were intended to take care of our 
own life, and health, and private good." These principles in 
our nature by which we are prompted to seek and to secure 
our own good are comprehended under the name of self-love, 
and those which lead us to seek the good of others are compre- 
hended under the name of benevolence. The term correspond- 
ing to this among the Greeks was (piTiuvQgavrlot, among the 
writers of the ISTew Testament aya^, and among the Romans 
humanitas. Under these terms are comprehended all those 
feelings and affections which lead us to increase the happiness 
and alleviate the sufferings of others, while the term self-love 
includes all those principles of our nature which prompt ug to 
seek our own good. According to some philosophers, our own 
good is the ultimate and only proper end of human actions, 
and when we do good to others it is done with a view to our 
own good. This is what is called the selfish philosophy, 
which in modern times has been maintained by Hobbes, Man- 
deville, Rochefoucault, and others. The other view, which 
is stated above in the words of Butler, has been strenuously 
defended by Cumberland, Hutcheson, Adam Smith, and 
Reid. 

BLASPMEMI (/SAasrrfi), to hurt).— u BhxatpYjyJa properly denotes 
calumny, detraction, reproachful or abusive language, against 
whomsoever it be vented." — Campbell, On the Gospels, Prelim. 
Dissert, ix., part ii. 

As commonly used, it means the wanton and irreverent use 
of language in reference to the Divine Being or to His worship 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 67 

BLASPHEMY- 

and service.* This is an offence against the light of nature, 
and was severely condemned by ancient ethical writers. Among 
the Jews, blasphemy was punished by death (Levit. xxiv. 14, 
16). And by the laws of many Christian nations it has been 
prohibited under heavy penalties. So late as the end of the 
seventeenth century, a man suffered death at Edinburgh for 
blasphemy. — See Arnot, Crim. Trials. 

Blasphemy differs from sacrilege, in that the former consists 
in using language, the later in some overt act. 
SODY. — "The primary ideas we have peculiar to body, as con- 
tradistinguished to spirit, are the cohesion of solid and con- 
sequently separable parts, and a power of communicating 
motion by impulse." — Locke, Essay on Hum. Understand., book 
ii., chap. 23. 

" Body is the external cause to which we ascribe our sensa- 
tions." — Mill, Logic, 2d edit., vol. i., p. 74. 

Monboddo (Ancient Metapliys., book ii., chap. 1), distin- 
guishes between matter and body, and calls body matter 
sensible, that is with those qualities which make it perceptible 
to our senses. This leaves room for understanding what is 
meant by a spiritual body, gu^a irvsvpoiTtKO!/, of which we 
read 1 Cor. xv. 44. He also calls body, " matter with form," 
in contradistinction to "first matter," which is matter without 
form. 

Body is distinguished as physical, mathematical, and meta- 
physical. Physical body is incomplete or complete. Incom- 
plete as in the material part of a living being ; thus man is 
said to consist of body and mind, and life is something different 
from the bodily frame in animals and vegetables. Complete, 
when composed of matter and form, as all natural bodies are. 
Mathematical body is the threefold dimensions of length, 
breadth, and thickness. Metaphysical body is body as included 
under the predicament of substance, which it divides with 
spirit. — V. Matter, Mind, Spirit. 
BONUUI, when given as one of the transcendental properties of 
being, means that God hath made all things in the best possible 

* Augustine said,— Jam vulgo blasphemia non accipitur nisi mala verba de Deo 

dicere. 



68 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

BONITJH— 

manner to answer the wisest ends, or that no thing is destitute 
of its essential properties, which metaphysicians call perfections. 
Perfections are distinguished into absolute and relative, the 
former making the nature to which they belong happy, and 
excluding all imperfection ; the latter belonging to inferior 
natures, and not excluding imperfection, but affording help 
and relief under its effects. — Hutch eson, Metapliys., pars 1, 
cap. 3. 

IBonum Morale, or what is good, relatively to man, was distin- 
guished into honum jucundum, or what is calculated to give 
pleasure, as music ; honum utile, or what is advantageous, as 
wealth ; and honum lionestum, or what is right, as temperance. 
These may be separate or conjoined in human actions. 

Bonnm guniiiiiim — the chief good. — This phrase was employed 
by ancient ethical philosophers to denote that in the prosecu- 
tion and attainment of which the progress, perfection, and 
happiness of human beings consist. The principal opinions 
concerning it are stated by Cicero in his treatise De Finibus. 
See also Augustin, De Summo Bono. 

Tucker, Light of Nature, has a chapter (27, of vol. i.), en- 
titled " Ultimate Good," which he says is the right translation 
of summum honum. 

According to Kant, " virtue is not the entire complete good 
as an object of desire to reasonable finite beings ; for, to have 
this character it should be accompanied by happiness, not as it 
appears to the interested eyes of our personality, which we 
conceive as an end of itself, but according to the impartial 
judgment of reason, which considers virtue in general, in the 
world, as an end in itself. Happiness and virtue, then, 
together constitute the possession of the sovereign good in an 
individual, but with this condition, that the happiness should 
be exactly proportioned to the morality (this constituting the 
value of the individual, and rendering him worthy of happi- 
ness). The sovereign good, consisting of these two elements, 
represents the entire or complete good, but virtue must be 
considered as the supreme good, because there can be no 
condition higher than virtue ; whilst happiness, which is 
unquestionably always agreeable to its possessor, is not of 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 69 

BONUM- 

itself absolutely good, but supposes as a condition, a morally 
good conduct.' 1 
J3RO€ARl>. — " I make use of all the brocardics, or rules of in- 
terpreters ; that is, not only what is established regularly, in 
law, but what is concluded wise and reasonable by the best 
interpreters." — Jeremy Taylor, Preface to Ductor Dubitantium. 
a To the Stoics and not to the Stagyrite, are we to refer the 
first announcement of the brocard — In intellects, nihil est, quod 
non prius fuerit in sensu" — Sir Will. Hamilton, Heidi s Works, 
note a, p. 772. 



CJENESTHEESIS. — V. SENSATION, SENSUS COMMUNIS. 
C4PACITY.— 

14 Is it for that such outward ornament 
Was lavished on their sex, that inward gifts 
Were left for haste unfinish'd, judgment scant, 
Capacity not raised to apprehend, 
Or value, what is best 
In choice, hut oftest to affect the wrong." 

Milton, Samson Agonistes* 

"The original power which the mind possesses of being 
taught, we call natural capacity ; and this in some degree is 
common to all men. The superior facility of being taught, 
which some possess above the rest, we call genius. The first- 
transition or advances from natural power, we call proficiency ; 
and the end or completion of proficiency we call habit. If such 
habit be conversant about matter purely speculative, it is then 
called science ; if it descend from speculation to practice, it is 
then called art; and if such practice be conversant in regulat- 
ing the passions and affections, it is then called moral virtue." — 
Harris, Philosoph. Arrang., chap. 8. 

" From habit, necessarily results power or capacity (in Greek 
'hvvotf^ig), which Aristotle has distinguished into two kinds. 
The first is the mere capacity of becoming any tiling. The second 
is the power or faculty of energizing, according to the habit when 
it is formed and acquired ; or, in other words, after the thing 



70 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

capacity- 
Is become and actually exists, which at first was only in the 
capacity of existing. This, Aristotle illustrates by the example 
of a child, who is then only a general in power (l» Zvvu/ust), 
that is, has the power of becoming a general, but when he 
has grown up and has become a general, then he has the 
power of the second kind, that is, the power of performing 
the office of a general." — Monboddo, Ancient Metaphys n b. i., 
chap. 4. 

" There are powers which are acquired by use, exercise, or 
study, which are called habits. There must be something in 
the constitution of the mind necessary to our being able to 
acquire habits, and this is commonly called capacity. 7 ' 1 '-' Reid T 
Intell. Pow., essay i., chap. 1. 

Dr. Reiddid not recognize the distinction of power as active 
or passive. But capacity is a passive power, or natural recep- 
tivity. A faculty is a power which we are conscious we can 
direct towards an end. A capacity is rather a disposition of 
aptitude to receive certain modifications of our consciousness^ 
in receiving which we are passive. But an original capacity? 
though at first passive, may be brought under the influence of 
will and attention, and when so exercised it corresponds to a 
mental power, and is no longer a pure receptivity. In sensa- 
tion, we are in the first instance passive, but our capacity of 
receiving sensations may be employed in various ways under 
the direction of will and attention, or personal activity. 
CARDINAL (The) Virtues, prudence, temperance, fortitude, and 
justice, were so called from cardo, a hinge ; because they were 
the hinges on which other virtues turned. Each one of them 
was a fons et principium, from which other virtues took their 
rise. 

The four cardinal virtues are rather the necessary and essen- 
tial conditions of virtue, than each individually a virtue. For 
no one can by itself be manifested as a virtue, without the 
other three. — Thurot, De V Entendement, torn, i., p. 162. 

This division of the virtues is as old as moral philosophy. It 
is found in the teaching of Socrates as recorded by Xenophon, 
with this difference, that evaefieiet or regard to the Deity holds 
the place of prudence or knowledge, which, united to virtue, 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 71 

CARDINAL— 

forms true wisdom. Plato notices temperance, fortitude, and 
prudence, and in connection with or arising out of these, justice, 
which he considered not as the single virtue of giving all their 
due, but as the perfection of human nature and of human society. 
The term justice had been employed in the same large sense 
by Pythagoras, and the corresponding term righteousness, is 
used in Scripture to signify not one virtue, but all the virtues. 
The four cardinal virtues are alluded to in the Apocrypha, 
Wisdom, viii. 7. 

The theological virtues are faith, hope, and charity ; which 
being added to the cardinal, make the number seven. 

" Justice, temperance, fortitude, and prudence, the old heads 
of the family of virtues, give us a division which fails altogether ; 
since the parts are not distinct, and the whole is not complete. 
The portions of morality so laid out, both overlap one another, 
or are undistinguishable ; and also leave parts of the subject 
which do not appear in the distribution at all." — Whewell. 
Sy sternal Mor., lect. iv. 

Clodius, De Virtutihus quas Cardinales Appellant, 4to, 
Leips., 1815. Plethon, De Quatuor Virtutihus Cardinalibus. 
8vo, Bash, 1552. 

The cardinal or principal points of the compass are the 
North, South, East, and West. 

The cardinal numbers are one, two, three, &c, in opposition 
to the ordinal, as first, second, third, &c. 
CASUISTRY is a department of ethics — "the great object of 
which is to lay down rules or canons for directing us how to 
act wherever there is any room for doubt or hesitation." — 
Stewart, Act. Poiv., b. iv., chap. 5, sect. 4. 

To casuistry, as ethical or moral, belongs the decision of 
what are called cases of conscience — that is, cases in which 
we are under obligation, but which, from the special cir- 
cumstances attending, give rise to doubt whether or how far 
the obligation may be relaxed or dissolved — such as the 
obligation to keep a promise obtained by fraud, or extorted 
by force. 

" All that philosophy of right and wrong which has become 
famous or infamous under the name of Casuistry, had its 



72 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

CASUISTBY— 

origin in the distinctioD between Mortal* and Venial Sin." — 
Cambridge Essays, 1856, p. 6. 
CATALEPSY (xaT«fcir4"£, catalepsy). — u The speculations of 
Berkeley and Boscovich on the non-existence of matter, and 
of Kant and others on the arbitrariness of all our notions, are 
interested in, for they appear to be confuted by, the intuitions 
of cataleptics. The cataleptic apprehends or perceives directly 
the objects around her; but they are the same as when realized 
through her senses. She notices no difference ; size, form, colour, 
distance, are elements as real to her now as before. In respect 
again to the future, she sees it, but not in the sense of the anni- 
hilation of time ; she foresees it ; it is the future present to 
her ; time she measures, present and future, with strange 
precision — strange, yet an approximation, instead of this cer 
tainty, would have been more puzzling. 

" So that it appears that our notions of matter, force, and th 
like, and of the conditions of space and time, apart from whid 
we can conceive nothing, are not figments to suit our human 
and temporary being, but elements of eternal truth." — Mayo, 
On Popular Superstitions, p. 125, 8vo, 3d edit., Edin., 1851. 

How far is the argument in the foregoing passage affected 
by the fact, that in sleep and in dreams we have sensations and 
perceptions in reference to objects which are not within the 
reach of the senses ? 

The paradox of Berkeley may be confuted in two ways : — 
First, by a reductio ad dbsurdum; second, no single existence 
can effect any change or event, and a change or event of some 
kind there must be, in order to create those sensations or states 
of mind in which consciousness consists. There must, there- 
fore, be something in existence foreign to ourselves, for no 
change, in other words, nothing which stands in the relation of 
cause and effect, is conceivable, but what is the result of two 
existences acting upon each other. 

See Sir Gilbert Blane on Muscular Motion, p. 258, note. 
CATEOOREMATIC (xotTYiyoQea, to predicate). — u A word is so 
called which may by itself be employed as a Term. Adverbs, 

• Tbis subject is fully and clearly discussed by Mr. Jowett.— Epistles of St. Paul, vol. 
ii., pp. 351, 352. 



; 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPIIY. ,0 

CATEGOREMATIC- 

Propositions. &c., and also Xouns in any other case besides 
the Nominative, are Syncategorematic, i. e., can only form part 
of a Term." — Whately, Log., b. ii., cli. 1, § 3. 

CATEGORICAL. — V. PROPOSITION. 
CATEGORY (xarigyogfa, to predicate). 

•• So again the distribution of things into certain tribes, which 

we call categories or predicaments , are but cautions against the 
confusion of definitions and divisions.' 1 — Bacon, Adv. of Lear n- 
. b. ii. 

The categories are the highest classes to which all the objects 
of knowledge can be reduced, and in which they can be 
arranged in subordination and system. Philosophy seeks to 
know all things. But it is impossible to know all things 
individually. They are. therefore, arranged in classes, accord- 
ing to properties which are common to them. And when we 
know the definition of a class, we attain to a formal knowledge 
oi all the individual objects of knowledge contained in that 
class. Every individual man we cannot know ; but if we know 
the definition of man, we know the nature of man. of which 
every individual of the species participates ; and in this sense 
we may be said to know all men. This attempt to render 
knowledge in some sense universal, has been made in all ages 
of philosophy, and has given rise to the categories which have 
appeared in various forms. They are to be found in the 
philosophy of Eastern nations, as a classification of things and 
of ideas. The categories of the followers of Pythagoras have 
been preserved by Aristotle in the first book of his Metaphysics. 
Those ascribed to Archytas are now regarded as apocryphal, 
and as having been fabricated about the beginning of the 
Christian era, to lower the reputation of Aristotle, whose 
s are well known. They are ten in number, viz., — 
waitt^ substance: sroroir, quantity: tto7oi/, quality; ttoo; t/, 
relation : stop, place : stote, time : k£J#4«/, situation : EJgmr, 
possession, or manner of holding : tojhf, action : and -ra^s/v, 
suffering. The Mnemonic verses which contain them, are : — 

Arbor sex servos ardore refrigerat ustos 
Cms rave stabo, sed tuuicatus ero.* 

» A humorous illustration of the categories is given by Cornelius to his pupil M.ir- 
tinus Scriblerus. Calling up the coachman, he asked him what he had seen a the 



74 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

CATEGORY— 

The categories of Aristotle are both logical and metaphysical, 
and apply to things as well as to words. Regarded logically, 
they are reducible to two, substance and attribute. Regarded 
metaphysically, they are reducible to being and accident. The 
Stoics reduced them to four, viz., substance, quality, manner 
of being, and relation. Plotinus attempted a new system. But 
the categories of Aristotle were acquiesced in till the time of 
Bacon, who recommended observation rather than classification. 
Descartes arranged all things under two great categories, the 
absolute and the relative. In the Port Royal Logic, seven 
categories are established. In more modern times the catego- 
ries of Kant are well known. They are quantity, quality, 
relation, and modality. But they are purely subjective, and 
give merely a classification of the conceptions or judgments of 
the understanding. In the history of philosophy, the categories 
have been successively a classification universal of things, of 
words, of ideas, or of forms of thought. And a complete 
theory of classification, or a complete system of categories is 
still a desideratum. — Monboddo, Origin of Lang., vol. i., p. 
520, and Ancient Metaphys., b. iii., chap. 1. — V. Predica- 
ment, Universal. 

Sir William Hamilton, ReioVs Works, p. 687, gives a deduc- 
tion and simplification of the categories of Aristotle. See also 
Discussions, pp. 26, 27, 2d edit. 

Mr. Mill {I^og., I. iii., ult.), gives the following classifica- 
tion of all nameable things : — 

1. Feelings or state of consciousness. 

2. The minds which experience these feelings. 

3. The bodies or external objects which excite certain of 
these feelings, together with the power or properties whereby 
they excite them. 

4. The successions and co- existences, the likenesses and un- 
likenesses, between feelings or states of consciousness. 

bear-garden? The man answered that he had seen two men fight for a prize; one was 
a fair man, a sergeant in the Guards ; the other black, a butcher ; the sergeant had red 
breeches, the butcher blue; they fought upon a stage about four o'clock, and the 
sergeant wounded the butcher in the leg. Mark (quoth Cornelius) how the fellow runs 
through the predicaments— men {substantia)— two {quantitas)— fair and black (qualitas) 
—sergeant and butcher (relatio)— wounded the other (actio et passio)— fighting (situs)- 
stage (ubi)— four o'clock (quando)— blue and red breeches (habitus). 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 75 

CAUSAI.IT Y , CAUSATION, CAUSE. 
CAUSE.— 

"He knew the cause of every maladie, 
Were it of cold, or hot, or moist, or drie." 

Chaucer, Prologue, v. 421. 

"The general idea of cause is, that without which another 
thing called the effect, cannot be ; and it is divided by Aristotle 
(Metapliys., lib. v., cap. 2), into four kinds, known by the name 
of the material, the formal, the efficient, and the filial. The 
first is that of which anything is made. Thus brass or marble 
are the material causes of a statue ; earth, air, fire, and water, 
of all natural bodies. The formal cause is the form, idea, 
archetype, or pattern of a thing ; for all these words Aristotle 
uses to express it. Thus the idea of the artist is the formal 
cause of the statue ; and of all natural substances, if we do not 
suppose them the work of chance, the formal cause are the 
ideas of the Divine mind ; and this form concurring with the 
matter, produces every work, whether of nature or art. The 
efficient cause is the principle of change or motion which pro- 
duces the thing. In this sense the statuary is the cause of the 
statue, and the God of nature the cause of all the works of 
nature. And lastly, the final cause is that for the sake of which 
anything is done. Thus the statuary makes the statue for 
pleasure or for profit ; and the works of nature are all for some 
good end." — Monboddo, Ancient Metapliys., b. L, chap. 4. 

In Metapliys., lib. i., cap. 3, Aristotle says we may distin- 
guish four kinds of causes. The first is the form proper to each 
thing. To ri vju swat. This is the quidditas of the schoolmen, 
the causa for malis. The second is the matter and the subject. 
C H vAy} kocI to v7Tox,eifcsvou, causa materialis. The third is the 
principle of movement which produced the thing. 'A^sj t«j$ 
KivTjasag, causa efiiciens. The fourth is the reason and good of 
all things ; for the end of all phenomena and of all movement is 
good. To oZ eye** xkito olyoiQov, causa finalis. The sufficient 
reason of Leibnitz, which he, like Aristotle, thought to be 
essentially good. 

In Metapliys., lib. iii., cap. 2, Aristotle says, "It is possible 
that one object may combine all the kinds of causes. Thus, in 
a house, the principle of movement is the art and the workmen, 



76 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

CAUSE— 

the final cause is the work, the matter the earth and stones, 
and the plan is the for my See also Nat. Auscult, lib. ii., cap. 
3, quoted by Harris, Concerning Art, p. 24. 

In addition to these four causes, Dr. Gillies (Analysis of 
Aristotle's Works, chap. 2, note, p. 100), says, "The model 
or exemplar was considered as a cause by the Pythagoreans 
and Platonists ; the former of whom maintained that all per- 
ceptible things were imitations of numbers; and the latter, 
that they owed their existence to the participation of ideas ; 
but wherein either this imitation or this participation con- 
sisted, these philosophers, Aristotle observes, omitted to 
show." 

Seneca, Epist. 66 and 67, explains the common and Platonic 
divisions of causes ; and arraigns both, because he conceived 
that space, time, and motion, ought to be included. 

Sir W. Hamilton (field's Works, p. 690, note), says, u The 
exemplary cause was introduced by Plato ; and was not 
adopted by the schoolmen as a fifth cause in addition to 
Aristotle's four." It is noticed by Suarez and others. 

According to Derodon (Be Prcedicam., p. 114), material 
and formal causes are internal, and constitute the essence of a 
thing ; efficient, final, and exemplary causes are external, that 
is, out from or of the essence of a thing. The material cause 
is that, ex quo, anything is, or becomes. The formal cause is 
that, per quod. The efficient cause is that, a quo. The final 
cause is that, propter quod. And the exemplary cause is that, 
ad cujus imitationem res fit. 

When the word cause is used without an adjective, it com- 
monly means, active power, that which produces change, or 
efficient cause. 

Suarez, BAvius, and others, define a cause thus : — Causam 
esse principium per se influens esse in aliud. 

Ens quod in se continet rationem, cur alterum existat, dicitur 
hujus causa. — Wolfius. 

" A cause is that which, of itself, makes anything begin to 
be." — Irons, Final Causes, p. 74. 

We conceive of a cause as existing and operating before the 
effect which is produced. But, to the production of an effect, 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 77 

CAUSE— 

more causes than one may be necessary. Hence it has been 
said by Mr. Karslake (Aids to the Study of Logic, vol. ii., p. 43), 
"The cause of a thing is that antecedent (or aggregate of 
antecedents), which is seen to have an intimate connection 
with the effect, viewed, if it be not itself a self- determining 
agent, in reference to self-acting power, whose agency it 
exhibits." And some, instead of the word cause, would prefer 
in many cases to use the word concauses. 

" Though the antecedent is most strictly the cause of a thing 
being, as, e.g., the passage of the moon between the earth and 
the sun is the cause of an eclipse, yet the effect is that which 
commonly presents itself to us as the cause of our knowing it to 
be. Hence, by what seems to us a strange inversion of cause 
and effect, effect ivas said to be a cause, a causa cognoscendi, 
as distinguished from a causa essendi, the strict causey — Kar- 
slake, Aids to Study of Logic, vol. ii., p. 38. — V. Occasion. 

CAUSALITY and CAUSATION. 

"Now, if there be no spirit, matter must of necessity move 
itself, where you cannot imagine any activity or causality, but 
the bare essence of the matter, from whence the motion comes." 
— H. More, Immortality of the Soul, book i., chap. 6. 

"Now, always God's word hath a causation with it. He 
said to him, Sit, that is, he made him sit, or as it is here 
expressed, he made him sit with a mighty power." — Goodwin, 
Works, vol. i., part i., p. 406. 

Causality, in actu prima, is the energy or power in the 
cause * by which it produces its effect ; as heat in the fire. 
Causality, in actu secundo, is causation or the operation of 
the power by which the cause is actually producing its effect. 
It is influxus iile, a quo causa influit esse in effect inn qua' 
distinguitur a parte rei, tarn a principio, quam a termino, sive 

* The idea of the reason is not to be confounded with that of causality. It is a more 
elevated idea, because it applies to all orders of things, while causality extends only to 
things in time. It is true we speak sometimes of the eternal cause; but thus the idea 
of cause is synonymous with that of the reason. This idea of the reason expresses the 
relation of a being or thing to what is contained within it; in other words, the reason 
expresses the rapport du contenant an contenu, or the reason is that whose essence encloses 
the essence and existence of another thing. We thus arrive at the conception of all 
being contained in God, who is the supreme reason.— A hrens, Cours de Psychol, torn. ii. 
— V. Reason. 



78 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

CAUSALITY— 

ab effectu ad quern tendit. u The changes of which I am con- 
scious in the state of my own mind, and those which I perceive 
in the external universe, impress me with a conviction that 
some cause must have operated to produce them. There is an 
intuitive judgment involving the simple idea of causation.' 1 — 
Stewart, Philosoph. Essays, i., chap. 3. 

From the explanation of these terms, it appears that a cause 
is something which not only precedes , but has power to produce 
the effect. And when the effect has been produced, we say it 
is in consequence of the power in the cause having operated. 
The belief that every exchange implies a cause, or that every 
change is produced by the operation of some power, is re- 
garded by some as a primitive belief, and has been denomi- 
nated by the phrase, the* principle of causality. Hume, and 
others, however, have contended that we have no proper idea 
of cause as implying power to produce, nor of any necessary 
connection between the operation of this power and the pro- 
duction of the effect. All that we see or know is mere 
succession, antecedent and consequent ; but having seen 
things in this relation, we associate them together, and 
imagining that there is some vinculum or connection between 
them, we call the one the cause, and the other the effect. 
Dr. Thomas Brown adopts this view with the modification 
that it is in cases where the antecedence and consequence is 
invariable If that we attain to the idea of cause. Experience, 
however, can only testify that the succession of one thing to 

* Lord Bacon {Nov. Organ., book ii, sect. 14), says, "There are some things ultimate 
and incausable." 

t "A cause, in the fullest definition which it philosophically admits, maybe said to 
be that which immediately precedes any change, and which, existing at any time in 
similar circumstances, has been always, and will be always, immediately followed by a 
similar change."— Brown, Inquiry, p. 13. 

"Antecedency and subsequency are immaterial to the proper definition of cause and 
effect; on the contrary, although an object, in order to act as a cause, must be in being 
antecedently to such action ; yet when it acts as a cause, its effects are synchronous 
with that action and are included in it, which a close inspection into the nature of cause 
will prove. For effects are no more than the new qualities of newly formed objects. 
Each conjunction of bodies (now separately in existence, and of certain defined quali- 
ties), produces upon their union these new natures, whose qualities must necessarily be 
in and with them in the very moment of their formation."— Essay on Cause and Effect, 
8vo, Lond., 1824, p. 50. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 79 

CAUSALITY— 

another has, in so far as it has been observed, been unvaried, 
not that in the nature of things it is invariable. Mr. Locke, 
(Essay on Hum. Understand., book ii., chaps. 21 and 26), 
ascribes the origin of our idea of cause to our experience of 
the sensible changes which one body produces on another, as 
fire upon wax. Our belief in an external world rests partly 
on the principle of causality. Our sensations are referred to 
external objects as their causes. Yet, the idea ofpoiver which 
is involved in that of cause, he traces to the consciousness of 
our possessing power in ourselves. This is the view taken of 
the origin of our idea of cause by Dr. Reid. u In the strict 
philosophical sense, I take a cause to be that which has the 
relation to the effect which I have to my voluntary and delibe- 
rate actions ; for I take this notion of a cause to be derived 
from the power I feel in myself to produce certain effects. In 
this sense we say that the Deity is the cause of the universe." 
— Correspondence of Dr. Reid, p. 77. And at p. 81 he has said, 
" I see not how mankind could ever have acquired the concep- 
tion of a cause, or of any relation beyond a mere conjunction 
in time and place between it and its effects, if they were not 
conscious of active exertions in themselves, by which effects 
are produced. This seems to me to be the origin of the idea, 
or conception of production." 

By origin, however, Dr. Reid must have meant occasion. 
At least he held that the principle of causality, or the belief 
that every change implies the operation of a cause, is a natural 
judgment, or a priori conviction, necessary and universal. 
But if the idea of a cause be empirical and grounded on 
experience, it may be difficult to show how a higher origin 
can be claimed for the principle of causality- Mr. Stewart has 
expressed himself in language equivalent to that of Dr. Reid. 
And Maine de Biran (Nouvelles Considerat. sur le Rapport du 
Physique et du Moral de VHomme, 8vo, Par-, 1834, pp. 274, 
290, 363, 402), thinks that the true origin of our idea of cause 
is to be found in the activity of the will, or in the conscious- 
ness that we are causes, or have in ourselves the power ot 
producing change. Having found the idea of power within 
the sphere of consciousness, we, by a process which he calls 



80 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

CAUSAMTY— 

natural induction, project this idea into the external world, 
and ascribe power to that which we call cause. According to 
Kant we have the idea of cause, and also the belief that every 
commencing phenomenon implies the operation of a cause. 
But these are merely forms of our understanding, subjective 
conditions of human thought. In conformity with a pre- 
existing law of our intelligence, we arrange phenomena 
according to the relation of cause and effect. But we 
know not whether, independently of our form of thought, 
there be any reality corresponding to our idea of cause, or of 
productive power. The view that the idea of cause is furnished 
by the fact of our being conscious of possessing power, meets 
the idealism of Kant, for what greater reality can be conceived 
than a fact of consciousness ? But if experience of external 
phenomena can be accepted as the origin (or rather as the 
occasion) of our notion of change, and if consciousness of 
internal phenomena can be accepted as the origin (or rather 
as the occasion) of our notion of power to produce change, 
the idea of a necessary and universal connection between 
change and the power which produces it, in other words, a 
belief in the principle of causality, can only be referred to the 
reason, the faculty which apprehends, not what is contingent 
and passing, but what is permanent and absolute. 

u Cousin's theory concerning the origin of idea of causality 
is, that the mind, when it perceives that the agent and the 
change vary in cases of personal agency (though here he is not 
very explicit), several times repeated ; while the relation 
between them, viz., the strict idea of personal causation, never 
varies, but is necessary ; that the mind abstracts the invariable 
and necessary element from the variable and contingent 
elements of the fact, and thus arrives at the idea of causality.'' 7 
— Essay on Causality, By an Undergraduate, 1854, p. 3. 
"CAUSATION is not an object of sense. The only experience we 
can have of it is in the consciousness we have of exerting 
some power in ordering our thoughts and actions. But this 
experience is surely too narrow a foundation for a general 
conclusion, that all things that have had or shall have a 
beginning must have a cause. This is to be admitted as a 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 81 

CAUSATION— 

first or self-evident principle." — Reid, Intell. Pow., essay vi., 
chap. 6. 

But Locke lias said (Essay on Hum. Understand., book ii.. 
chap. 21, § 4), "The idea of the beginning of motion we 
have only from reflection on what passes in ourselves, where 
we find by experience, that barely by willing it, barely by a 
thought of the mind, we can move the parts of our bodies 
which were before at rest." 

See Cousin, (Euvres, Prem. Ser., torn. L, cours 1817, and 
Hist, de Philosoph. Mod., sect. 19. See also on the various 
theories as to the origin of our judgment of cause and effect , 
Sir Will. Hamilton, Discussions, App. 1. 
CAUSES (Final, Doctrine of). — When we see means independent 
of each other conspiring to accomplish certain ends, we na- 
turally conclude that the ends have been contemplated, and 
the means arranged by an intelligent agent ; and, from the 
nature of the ends and of the means, we infer the character or 
design of the agent. Thus, from the ends answered in creation 
being wise and good, we infer not only the existence of an 
Intelligent Creator, but also that He is a Being of infinite 
wisdom and goodness. This is commonly called the argument 
from design or from final causes. It was used by Socrates 
(see Xenophon, Memorabilia), and found a place in the scho- 
lastic philosophy. But Lord Bacon has said (De Aug. Scient.. 
lib. iii., cap. 5), that the inquiry into final causes is sterile. 
And Descartes maintained that we cannot know the designs of 
God in creating the universe, unless he reveal them to us. But 
Leibnitz, in maintaining the principle of sufficient reason. 
upheld the doctrine of final causes, and thought it equally 
applicable in physics and in metaphysics. It is true that in 
physical science we should prosecute our inquiries without any 
preconceived opinion as to the ends to be answered, and 
observe the phenomena as they occur, without forcing them 
into the service of an hypothesis. And it is against this error 
that the language of Bacon was directed. But when our con- 
templations of nature reveal to us innumerable adjustment- 
and arrangements working out ends that are wise and good, it 
is natural to conclude that they have been designed by a COUH 
g' 



82 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

CAUSES— 

sovereignly wise and good. Notwithstanding the doubts as to 
the logical validity of this argument, which have been started 
by Kant, Coleridge, and others, it continues to be regarded as 
the most popular and impressive mode of proving the being 
and perfections of God. And the validity of it is implied in 
the universally admitted axiom of modern physiology, that 
there is no organ without its function. We say of some things 
in nature that they are useless. All we can truly say is, that 
we have not yet discovered their use. Everything has an end 
to the attainment or accomplishment of which it continually 
tends. This is the form in which the doctrine of final causes 
was advocated by Aristotle. With him it was not so much an 
argument from design, as an argument against chance. But 
if things do not attain their ends by chance it must be by 
design. Aristotle, it is true, was satisfied that ends were 
answered by tendencies in nature. But whence or why these 
tendencies in nature, but from an Intelligent Author of nature? 
"If we are to judge from the explanations of the principle 
given by Aristotle, the notion of a final cause, as originally 
conceived, did not nee essarily imply design. The theological 
sense to which it is now commonly restricted, has been derived 
from the place assigned to it in the scholastic philosophy ; 
though, indeed, the principle had been long before beautifully 
applied by Socrates and by the Stoics to establish the truth of 
a Divine Providence. Whenever, indeed, we observe the 
adjustment of means to an end, we seem irresistibly impelled to 
conclude that the whole is the effect of design. The present 
acceptation, therefore, of the doctrine of final causes, is un- 
doubtedly a natural one. Still it is not a necessary construction 
of the doctrine. With Aristotle, accordingly, it is simply an 
inquiry into tendencies — an investigation of any object or 
phenomenon, from considering the heaa, rov, the reason of it, in 
something else which follows it, and to which it naturally leads. 
"His theory of final causes is immediately opposed to a 
doctrine of chance, or spontaneous coincidence ; and must be 
regarded as the denial of that, rather than as a positive asser- 
tion of design. He expressly distinguishes, indeed, between 
thought and nature. He ascribes to nature the same working 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 83 

CAUSES— 

in order to ends, which is commonly regarded as the attribute 
of thought alone- He insisted that there is no reason to 
suppose deliberation necessary in these workings of nature, 
since it is 4 as if the art of shipbuilding were in the timber, or 
just as if a person should act as his own physician.' " — Hampden, 
Introd. to Mor. Phil, lect. iv., p. 113. 

u The argument from final causes" says Dr. Reid (Intell. 
Pow., essay vi., chap. 6), " when reduced to a syllogism, has 
these two premises : — First, that design and intelligence in the 
cause may, with certainty, be inferred from marks or signs of 
it in the effect. This we may call the major proposition of the 
argument. The second, which we call the minor proposition, 
is, that there are in fact the clearest marks of design and 
wisdom in the works of nature ; and the conclusion is, that the 
works of nature are the effects of a wise and intelligent cause. 
One must either assent to the conclusion, or deny one or other 
of the premises." 

Hampden, Introd. to Mor. Phil, pp. 110-113 ; Irons, Doctrine 
of Final Causes, 8vo, Loncl., 1856. The argument from 
design is prosecuted by Paley, in Nat. Tlieol. ; in Bridgewater 
Treatises; Burnett Prize Essays, &c. 

CAUSES (Occasional, Doctrine of).— This phrase has been em- 
ployed by the Cartesians to explain the commerce or mode of 
communicating between mind and matter. The soul beino- a 
thinking substance, and extension being the essence of body. 
no intercourse can take place between them without the inter- 
vention of the First Cause. It is Deity himself, therefore, 
who, on the occasion of certain modifications in our minds, 
excites the corresponding movements of body ; and, on the 
occasion of certain changes in our body, awakens the corre- 
sponding feelings in the mind. This theory, which is involved 
in the philosophy of Descartes, was fully developed by Male- 
branche, Regis, and Geulinx. Laforge limited the theory to 
involuntary movements, and thus reconciled it in some degree 
to experience and common sense. Malebranche's doctrim is 
commonly called the u vision of all things in God " — who is the 
" light of all our seeing.'' 
According to this theory, the admirable structure of the 



84 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

CAUSES— 

body and its organs is useless ; as a dull mass would have 
answered the purpose equally well. 
CERTAINTY, CERTITUDE (Certain (from cerno), proprie 
idem sit, quod decretum ac proinde firmum. Vossius). 

"This way of certainty by the knowledge of our own ideas, 
goes a little farther than bare imagination ; and I believe it will 
appear that all the certainty of general truths a man has, lies 
in nothing else." — Locke, Essay on Hum. Understand., book iii., 
chap. 4. 

u Certain, in its primary sense, is applied (according to its 
etymology, from cerno), to the state of a person's mind ; de- 
noting any one's full and complete conviction ; and generally, 
though not always, implying that there is sufficient ground for 
such conviction. It was thence easily transferred metonymically 
to the truths or events, respecting which this conviction is ra- 
tionally entertained. And uncertain (as well as the substantives 
and adverbs derived from these adjectives) follows the same 
rule. Thus we say, 4 It is certain,' &c, meaning that we are 
sure ; whereas the fact may be uncertain and certain to different 
individuals. From not attending to this, the words uncertain 
and contingent have been considered as denoting some quality 
in the things themselves — and chance has been regarded as a 
real agent." — Whately, Log., Appendix 1. 

" Certainty is truth brought methodically to the human 
intellect, that is, conducted from principle to principle, to a 
point which is evident in itself. It is the relation of truth to 
knowledge, of God to man, of ontology to psychology." — 
Tiberghien, Essai des Connais. Hum., p. 35. 

" In accurate reasoning, the word certain ought never to be 
used as merely synonymous with necessary. Physical events 
we call necessary, because of their depending on fixed causes, 
not on known causes ; when they depend also on known causes, 
they may be called certain. The variations of the weather 
arise from necessary and fixed causes, but they are proverbially 
uncertain." — Coplestone, Remains, 8vo, Lond., 1854, p. 98. 

When we affirm, without any doubt, the existence or non- 
existence of a being or phenomenon, the truth or falsity of a 
proposition, the state in which our mind is we call certainty — 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 85 

CERTAINTY — 

and we say of the object of knowledge that it is evident or 
certain. According to the mode in which it is attained, 
certainty is immediate by sense and intuition, and mediate by 
reasoning and demonstration. According to the grounds on 
which it rests, it is called metaphysical, when we firmly adhere 
to truth which cannot be otherwise ; such as the first principles 
of natural law, or the difference between right and wrong. 
Physical, when we adhere to truth which cannot be otherwise, 
according to the laws of nature, but which may be by miracle ; 
as, fire will certainly burn — although it did not burn the 
Hebrew youths (Dan., chap, hi.) Moral, when we adhere to 
truth which is in accordance with the common order of things, 
and the common judgment of men — although it may be other- 
wise without a miracle. 

Moral certainty may amount to the highest degree of proba- 
bility, and to all practical purposes may be as influential as 
certainty. For it should be observed that probability and 
certainty are two states of mind, and not two modes of the 
reality. The reality is one and the same, but our knowledge 
of it may be probable or certain. Probability has more or 
less of doubt, and admits of degrees. Certainty excludes 
doubt, and admits neither of increase nor diminution. 

Certainty supposes an object to be known, a mind to know, 
and the result of a communication or relation being established 
between them which is knowledge ; and certain knowledge or 
certainty is the confidence with which the mind reposes in the 
information of its faculties. Self- consciousness reveals with 
certainty the different states and operations of our own minds. 
The operations of memory may give us certainty as to the past. 
We cannot doubt the reality of what our senses clearly testify. 
Reason reveals to us first truths with intuitive certainty. And 
by demonstration we ascend with certainty from one truth to 
another. For to use the words of Thomas Aquinas (T)t Vi ri- 
tate), u Tunc conclusiones pro certo sciuntur, quando resol- 
vuntur in principia, et idea, quod aliquod per certitudinem 
sciatur, est ex lumine rationis divinitus interius indito, quo in 
nobis loquitur Deus, non autem ab homine exterius docente, nisi 
quatenus conclusiones in principia resoh'it, nos docens, ex quo 



86 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

CERTAINTY- 

tamen nos certitudinem non acciperemus, nisi in nobis esset 
certitude* principiorum, in quce conclusiones resolvunturP 

u The criterion of true knowledge is not to be looked for 
anywhere abroad without our own minds, neither in the 
height above, nor in the depth beneath, but only in our know- 
ledge and conceptions themselves. For the entity of all 
theoretical truth is nothing else but clear intelligibility, and 
whatever is clearly conceived, is an entity and a truth ; but 
that which is false, Divine power itself cannot make it to be 
clearly and distinctly understood, because falsehood is a non- 
entity, and a clear conception is an entity ; and Omnipotence 
itself cannot make a non-entity to be an entity." — Cudworth, 
Eternal and Immutable Mor., book iv., chap. 5. 

u The theories of certitude may be reduced to three classes. 
The first places the ground of certitude in reason ; the second 
in authority; the third in evidence; including, under that 
term, both the external manifestations of truth, and the inter- 
nal principles or laws of thought by which we are determined 
in forming our judgments in regard to them." — Buchanan, 
Faith in God, vol. ii., p. 304. 

" De veritatis criterio frustra labor antur quidam: quum non 
alia reperienda sit prater ipsam rationis facultatem, aut menti 
congenitam intelligendi vim." — Hutcheson, Metaphys., pars i., 
cap. 2. 

Protagoras and Epicurus in ancient times, and Hobbes and 
the modern sensationalists, have made sense the measure and 
ground of certainty. Descartes and his followers founded it 
on self-consciousness, Cogito ergo sum; while others have 
received as certain only what is homologated by human reason 
in general. But certainty is not the peculiar characteristic of 
knowledge furnished by any one faculty, but is the common 
inheritance of any or all of our intellectual faculties when 
legitimately exercised within their respective spheres. When 
so exercised we cannot but accept the result as true and 
certain. 

But if we are thus naturally and necessarily determined to 
accept the knowledge furnished by our faculties, that know- 
ledge, according to Kant, cannot be proved to be absolute, 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 87 

CERTAINTY— 

or a knowledge of things in themselves, and as they must 
appear to all intelligent beings, but is merely relative, or a 
knowledge of things as they appear to us. Now, it is true 
that we cannot, as Kant has expressed it, objectify the sub- 
jective. Without rising out of human nature to the possession 
of a higher, we cannot sit in judgment on the faculties of that 
nature. But in admitting that our knowledge is relative, we 
are merely saying it is human. It is according to the measure 
of a man. It is attained by human faculties, and must be 
relative, or bear proportion to the faculties by which it is 
attained. In like manner, the knowledge of angels may be 
called angelic, but this is not to call it uncertain. We may 
not know all that can be known of the objects of our know- 
ledge, but still, what we do know, we may know with certainty. 
Human knowledge may admit of increase without being liable 
to be contradicted or overturned. TTe come to it by degrees, 
but the higher degree of knowledge to which we may ulti- 
mately attain, does not invalidate the lower degree of know- 
ledge. It rests upon it and rises out of it, and the ground and 
encouragement of all inquiry is, that there is a truth and 
reality in things, which our faculties are fitted to apprehend. 
Their testimony we rejoice to believe. Faith in their trust- 
worthiness is spontaneous. Doubt concerning it is an after- 
thought. And scepticism as a creed is self-destructive. He 
who doubts is certain that he doubts. Omnis qui utrum sit 
Veritas dubitat, in se ipso habet verum, unde non dubitet. — 
Augustin, Be vera Religions. 

Edam qui negat veritatem esse, concedit veritatem esse; si 
enim Veritas non est, verum est, veritatem non esse. Thomas 
Aquin., Sum. Tlieoh; Savary, Sur la Certitude, 8vo, Paris, 1847. 
— V. Evidence, CpiTEraox, Knowledge. 
CHANCE. — Aristotle says, " According to some, chance is a cause 
not manifest to human reasoning." AoksI /m£» uiriet tj Tv^r,, 
oi^rihov Is cludooj^iur, oioluoioc. — Phys., ii., 4. 

"Many things happen, besides what man intends or pur- 
poses ; and also some things happen different from what is 
aimed at by nature. We cannot call them natural thing 
from nature, neither can we say that they are from human 



88 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

CHEAJVCE— 

intention. They are what we call fortuitous events, and the 
cause which produces them is called chance. But they have 
all respect to some end intended by nature or by man. So 
that nothing can be more true than what Aristotle says (Phys., 
lib. ii.), that if there were no end intended, there could be no 
chance. 

" A man digs a piece of ground, to sow or plant it ; but, in 
digging, he finds a treasure. This is beside his intention, and 
therefore it is said to be by chance. 

" When a hanging wall falls upon a passenger and crushes 
him, the destination of nature was only, that the stones of the 
wall being no longer kept together by the cement, should fall 
to the ground, according to their natural movement ; so that 
the crushing of the man was something beside the purpose of 
nature, or ttu^cx. (pvatv." — Monboddo, Ancient. Metaphys*, book 
ii., chap. 20. 

As to Aristotle's views of fortune and chance, see Piccoloni- 
ineus, Philosoph de Moribus, 1583, p. 713. 

Chance is opposed to law in this sense, viz., that what hap- 
pens according to law may be predicted, and counted on. But 
everything has its own law and its proper cause ; and chance 
merely denotes that we know not the proper cause, nor the 
law according to which a phenomenon occurs. 

An event or series of events which seems to be the result 
neither of a necessity inherent in the nature of things, nor of a 
plan conceived by intelligence, is said to happen by chance. 

"It is not, I say, merely in a pious manner of expression, 
that the Scripture ascribes every event to the providence of 
God ; but it is strictly and philosophically true in nature and 
reason, that there is no such thing as chance or accident ; it 
being evident that these words do not signify anything that is 
truly an agent or the cause of any event ; but they signify 
merely men's ignorance of the real and immediate cause." — 
Clarke, vol. i., Sermon xcviii. 

"If a die be thrown, we say it depends upon chance what 
side may turn up ; and, if we draw a prize in a lottery, we as- 
cribe our success to chance. We do not, however, mean that 
these effects were produced by no cause, but only that we are 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 80 

CHANCE— 

ignorant of the cause that produced them." — Arthur, Dis- 
courses, p. 17. 

In what sense we may say there is such a thing as chance, 
and in what sense not, see M'Cosh, Typical Forms, p. 40 ; 
Mill, Log., b. iii., chap. 17. 

CHANCES (Theory of). — " The theory of chances consists in re- 
ducing all events of the same kind to a certain number of cases 
equally possible, that is, such that we are equally undecided as 
to their existence ; and in determining the number of these 
cases which are favourable to the event of which the probability 
is sought. The ratio of that number to the number of all the 
possible cases, is the measure of the probability ; which is thus 
a fraction, having for its numerator the number of cases favour- 
able to the event, and for its denominator the number of all 
the cases which are possible." — Laplace, Essai Phil sur les 
Probabilite's, 5th edit., p. 7. 

CHARITY (dyanYi), as one of the theological virtues, is a prin- 
ciple of prevailing love to God, prompting to seek his glory 
and the good of our fellow-men. 

Sometimes it is used as synonymous with brotherly love, or 
that principle of benevolence which leads us to promote, in all 
possible ways, the happiness of others. 

In a more restricted sense it means almsgiving, or relieving 
the wants of others by communication of our means and sub- 
stance. 

CHASTITY is the duty of restraining and governing the appetite 
of sex. It includes purity of thought, speech, and behaviour. 
Lascivious imaginings, and obscene conversation, as well as 
incontinent conduct, are contrary to the duty of chastity. 

CHOICE. 

"The necessity of continually choosing one of the two, either 
to act or to forbear acting, is not inconsistent with or an argu- 
ment against liberty, but is itself the very essence of liberty." 
— Clarke, Demonstration, prop. 10. 

" For the principle of deliberate choice, Aristotle thought that 
the rational and irrational should concur, producing " orectic 
intellect," or " dianoetic appetite," of which he emphatically 
says, — " And this principle is man." — Catholic Philosophy, p. 46. 



90 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

CHOICE— 

Mr. Locke says, "The will signifies nothing but a power or 
ability to prefer or choose" And in another passage he says, 
" The word preferring seems best to express the act of volition ; 
yet it does not precisely, for though a man would prefer flying 
to walking, yet who can say he ever wills it?" — By Jonathan 
Edwards {Essay on Freedom of Will, sect. 1), choice and voli- 
tion are completely identified. But, in popular language, 
choosing or preferring may mean — 1. A conclusion of the under- 
standing ; as when I say — I prefer or choose peaches rather 
than plums ; i. e., I reckon them a better and safer fruit. 

2. A state of inclination or sensibility; as, I prefer or choose 
plums rather than pears ; that is, I like them better ; or — 

3. A determination of will ; as, I prefer or choose pears, 
meaning that, with the offer of other fruits, I take this. 

It is only in the latter sense that choice and volition are the 
same. — See Tappan, Appeal to Consciousness, ch. 3, sect. 4, 5. 

u Choice or preference, in the proper sense, is an act of the 
understanding ; but sometimes it is improperly put for volition, 
or the determination of the will in things where there is no 
judgment or preference ; thus, a man who owes me a shilling, 
lays down three or four equally good, and bids me take which 
I choose. I take one without any judgment or belief that 
there is any ground of preference ; this is merely an act of will, 
that is, a volition." — Correspondence of Dr. Reid, p. 79. 

" To prefer is an act of the judgment ; and to choose is an 
act of the will. The one describes intellectual, and the other 
practical decision." — Taylor, Synonyms. 

CHREMATISTICS (xWP*"> goods), is the science of wealth, or 
as it is more commonly called, Political Economy, or that de- 
partment of social science which treats of the resources of a 
country, and of the best means of increasing them, and of dif- 
fusing them most beneficially among the inhabitants, regarded 
as individuals, or as constituting a community. 

CIVIXITY or COUKTEOUSNE^S belongs to what have been 
called the lesser moralities. It springs from benevolence or 
brotherly love, and manifests itself by kindness and consider- 
ation in manner and conversation towards others. It is distin- 
guished into natural and conventional. It is opposed to 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 01 

CIVIIilTY— 

rudeness. Dr. Ferguson says civility avoids giving offence by 
our conversation or manner. Politeness seeks to please. — 
Knox, Essays, No. 95. 
CLASSIFICATION (xhrjaig, classis, from »e*As<y, to call, a multi- 
tude called together). 

"Montesquieu observed very justly, that in their classification 
of the citizens, the great legislators of antiquity made the 
greatest display of their powers, and even soared above them- 
selves."— Burke, On the French Revolution. 

" A class consists of several things coming under a common 
description.'' — Whately, Log., b. i., § 3. 

u The sorting of a multitude of things into parcels, for the sake 
of knowing them better, and remembering them more easily, 
is classification. When we attempt to classify a multitude of 
things, we first observe some respects in which they differ from 
each other ; for we could not classify things that are entirely 
alike ; as, for instance, a bushel of peas ; we then separate 
things that are not alike, and bring together things that are 
similar." — Taylor, Elements of TJwught. 

"In every act of classification, two steps must be taken; 
certain marks are to be selected, the possession of which is to 
be the* title to admission into the class, and then all the objects 
that possess them are to be ascertained. When the marks 
selected are really important and connected closely with the 
nature and functions of the thing, the classification is said to 
be natural; where they are such as do not affect the nature 
of the objects materially, and belong in common to things the 
most different in their main properties, it is artificial.^ — 
Thomson, Outline of Laws of Thought, 2d edit., p. 377. 

The condition common to both modes of classification, is to 
comprehend everything and to suppose nothing. But the rules 
for a natural classification are more strict than for an artificial 

* Abstraction, generalization, and definition, precede classification; for if we wish to 
reduce to regularity the observations we have made, we must compare them, in order 
to unite them by their essential resemblances, and express their essence with all 
possible precision. We might classify a library by dividing the books into history and 
philosophy. History into ancient and modem ; ancient, according to the people to whom 
it referred, and modern into general, particular, and individual, or memoirs- These 
divisions and subdivisions might be called a classification. 



92 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

CLASSIFICATION— 

or arbitrary one. We may classify objects arbitrarily in any 
point of view in which we are pleased to regard them. But a 
natural classification can only proceed according to the real 
nature and qualities of the objects. The advantages of 
classification are to give a convenient form to our acquire- 
ments, and to enlarge our knowledge of the relations in which 
different objects stand to one another. A good classification 
should — 1st, Rest on one principle or analogous principles. 
2d, The principle or principles should be of a constant and per- 
manent character. 3d, It should be natural, that is, even when 
artificial, it should not be violent or forced. 4th, It should 
clearly and easily apply to all the objects classified. 

The principles on which classification rests are these :■ — 1st, 
of Generalization ; 2d, of Specification ; and 3d, of Continuity, — 
q. v. 

Classification proceeds upon observed resemblances. Gen- 
eralization rests upon the principle, that the same or similar 
causes will produce similar effects. — Mill, Log., b. i., chap. 7, 
§ 4; M'Cosh, Typical Forms, b. iii., chap. 1. 
COONITION (cognosco, to know). — According to Kant , cognition 
(Erkenntniss) is the determined reference of certain repre- 
sentations to an object, that is, that object in the conception 
whereof the diverse of a given intuition is united. Erkennt- 
niss-vermogen is the cognition faculty, or the faculty of cog- 
nition. To cognize, is to refer a perception to an object by 
means of a conception. For cognizing, understanding is 
required. A dog knows his master, but he does not cognize him. 

Representing something to one's self (yorstellen) is the first 
degree of 'cognition; representing to one's self with consciousness 
(walirnehmen), or perceiving, is the second ; knowing (kennen) 
something, or representing to one's self something in comparison 
with other things, as well in respect of identity as difference, is 
the third; cognizing (erkenneri) or knowing something with 
consciousness, the fourth ; understanding (yerstanden) cogniz- 
ing through the understanding by means of the conceptions, or 
conceiving something, the fifth ; cognizing something through 
reason or perspecting (einsehen), the sixth; and comprehending 
something (begriefen), that is, cognizing it through reason a 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 93 

COGNITION— 

priori in a degree sufficient for our purpose, the seventh. For 
all our comprehending is only relative, that is sufficient for a 
certain purpose ; absolutely we do not comprehend anything. — 
Haywood, Crit. of Pure Reason, p. 593, 2d edit. 
DOULICJATION OF FACTS in Induction, is a phrase employed 
by Dr. Whewell to denote the binding together .groups of 
facts by means of some suitable conception. The conception 
must be capable of explanation or definition, not indeed of 
adequate definition, since we shall have to alter our description 
of it from time to time with the advance of knowledge, but 

still capable of a precise and clear explanation 

Conceptions not wholly correct may serve for a time for the 
colligation of facts, and may guide us in researches which shall 
end in a more exact colligation. .... As soon as facts 
occur which a conception is inadequate to explain, we unite it 
or replace it by a new one. — Thomson, Outline of Laws of 
Thought, 2d edit., p. 353. 
COMBINATION and CONNECTION of IDEAS are phrases to 
be found in book ii., chap. 33, of Locke's Essay, in which he 
treats of what is more commonly called Association of Ideas, — 
q. v. 

COMBINATION OF IDEAS. — The phrase Association of Ideas 
seems to have been introduced by Locke. It stands as the title 
to one of the chapters in his Essay on the Human Understanding. 
But in the body of the chapter he uses the phrase combination 
of ideas. These two phrases have reference to the two views 
which may be taken of the train of thought in the mind. In 
both, under ideas are comprehended all the various modes of 
consciousness. In treating of the association of ideas, the 
inquiry is as to the laws which regulate the succession or order 
according to which one thought follows another. But, it has 
been observed, that the various modes of consciousness not 
only succeed in some kind of order, but that they incorporate 
themselves with one another so as to form permanent and 
almost indissoluble combinations. 

"When many impressions or ideas are operating in the 
mind together, there sometimes takes place a process, of a 
similar kind to chemical combination. When impressions 



94 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

COMBINATION— 

have been so often experienced in conjunction, that each 
of them calls up readily and instantaneously the ideas of 
the whole group, these ideas sometimes melt and coalesce 
into one another, and appear not several ideas, but one : 
in the same manner as when the seven prismatic colours 
are presented to the eye in rapid succession, the sensation 
produced is that of white. But, as in this last case, it is correct 
to say, that the seven colours, when they rapidly follow one 
another, generate white, but not that they actually are white ; 
so it appears to me that the Complex Idea, formed by the 
blending together of several simple ones, should, when it really 
appears simple (that is, when the separate elements are not 
consciously distinguishable in it), be said to result from, or to 
be generated by, the simple ideas, not to consist of them. Our 
idea of an orange really consists of the simple ideas of a certain 
colour, a certain form, a certain taste, and smell, &c, because 
we can by interrogating our consciousness, perceive all these 
elements in the idea. But we cannot perceive, in so apparently 
simple a feeling as our perception of the shape of an object by 
the eye, all that multitude of ideas derived from other senses, 
without which, it is well ascertained, that no such visual per- 
ception would ever have had existence ; nor in our idea of 
extension can we discover these elementary ideas of resistance 
derived from our muscular frame, in which Dr. Brown has 
shown it to be highly probable that the idea originates. These, 
therefore, are cases of mental chemistry, in which it is proper 
to say that the simple ideas generate, rather than that they 
compose the complex ones." — Mill, Log,, b. vi., ch. 4, § 4. 

Suppose, that, in eating an apple we had made use of a 
fruit knife ; a connection comes to be established in our minds 
between an apple and a fruit knife ; so that when the idea of 
the one is present, the idea of the other also will appear ; and 
these two ideas are said to be associated in the way of com- 
bination. 

Or, the same kind of connection maybe established between 
two feelings, or between a cognition and a feeling, or between 
a feeling and a volition, — between any two or more mental 
movements. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 9B 

COMBINATION— 

In cutting an apple, we may have wounded our finger; and, 
afterwards, the sight of an apple will raise a sense or feeling 
of the wound. Having eaten of honey, we have afterwards 
suffered pain ; and, when honey is again presented, there will 
be a feeling of dislike, and a purpose to abstain from it. 

The association, which thus takes place between different 
mental movements, is more than mere juxtaposition of separate 
things. It amounts to a perfect combination or fusion. And, 
as in matter, compounds have properties which are not mani- 
fested by any of the component parts, in their separate state, 
so it is in mind ; the result of various thoughts and feelings 
being fused into one whole, may be to produce a new principle, 
with properties differing from the separate influence of each 
individual thought and feeling. In this way, many secondary 
and factitious principles of action are formed. 
COMMON SENSE is a phrase employed to denote that degree of 
intelligence, sagacity, and prudence, which is common to all 
men. 

" There is a certain degree of sense which is necessary to oar 
being subjects of law and government, capable of managing 
our own affairs and answerable for our conduct to others. This 
is called common sense, because it is common to all men with 
whom we can transact business. 

"The same degree of understanding which makes a man 
capable of acting with common prudence in life, makes him 
capable of discerning what is true and what is false in matters 
that are self-evident, and which he distinctly apprehends." — 
Reid, Intell. Pow., essay vi., ch. 2. 

"It is by the help of an innate power of distinction that we 
recognize the differences of things, as it is by a contrary power 
of composition that we recognize their identities. These 
powers, in some degree, are common to all minds ; and as 
they are the basis of our whole knowledge (which is, of neces- 
sity, either affirmative or negative), they may be said to consti- 
tute what we call common sense" — Harris, Philosoph. Arrange., 
chap. 9. 
COITOION SENSE (The Philosophy of) is that philosophy which 
accepts the testimony of our faculties as trustworthy within 



96 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

€OI?IiTION SENSE— 

their respective spheres, and rests all human knowledge on 
certain first truths or primitive beliefs, which are the constitu- 
tive elements or fundamental forms of our rational nature, and 
the regulating principles of our conduct. 

"As every ear not absolutely depraved is able to make 
some general distinctions of sound ; and, in like manner, every 
eye, with respect to objects of vision; and as this general use 
of these faculties, by being diffused through all individuals, 
may be called common hearing and common vision, as opposed 
to those more accurate energies, peculiar only to artists ; so 
fares it with respect to the intellect. There are truths or 
universals of so obvious a kind, that every mind or intellect 
not absolutely depraved, without the least help of art, can 
hardly fail to recognize them. The recognition of these, or at 
least the ability to recognize them, is called vovg x,oti/6g, common 
sense, as being a sense common to all except lunatics and 
idiots. 

" Further, as this power is called xoivog vovg, so the several 
propositions which are its proper objects, are called K^ohtyug, 
or pre-conceptions, as being previous to all other conceptions. 
It is easy to gather from what has been said that those 
iFttihirtyeig must be general, as being formed by induction ; as 
also natural, by being common to all men, and previous to all 
instruction — hence, therefore, their definition. A pre-con- 
ception is the natural apprehension of what is general or 
universal." — Harris, On Happiness, p. 46. 

A fundamental maxim of the Stoics was, that there is 
nothing in the intellect which has not first been in the sense. 
They admitted, however, natural notions, which they called 
anticipations, and artificial notions formed in us by the under- 
standing. They also recognized notions which all men equally 
receive and understand. These cannot be opposed to one 
another ; they form what is called common sense. — Bouvier, 
Hist, de la Philosophy torn, i., p. 149, 8vo, Paris, 1844. 

u A power of the mind which perceives truth, not by pro- 
gressive argumentation, but by an instinctive and instantaneous 
impulse; derived neither from education nor from habit, but 
from nature ; acting independently upon our will, whenever 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 97 

COMMON SENSE— 

the object is presented, according to an established law; and, 
therefore, not improperly called a sense, and acting in the 
same manner upon all mankind ; and, therefore, properly 
called common sense, the ultimate judge of truth." — Beattie, 
Essay on Truth, pp. 36-42. 

u Common sense" says Mons. Jaques (Mem. de VAcadem., 
Roy- des Sciences Mor. et Pol., torn, i., p. 349, Paris, 1841), 
"is the unanimous sentiment of the whole human race, upon 
facts and questions which all may know and resolve — or, more 
precisely, it is the ensemble (complement) of notions and 
opinions common to all men of all times and places, learned 
or ignorant, barbarous or civilized. Spontaneity, imperson- 
ality, and universality, are the characteristics of truths of 
common sense ; and hence their truth and certainty. The 
moral law, human liberty, the existence of God, and immor- 
tality of the soul, are truths of common sense." 

On the nature and validity of the common sense philosophy, 
see Reid's Works by Sir W. Hamilton, Appendix, note a; 
Oswald, Appeal to Common Sense; Beattie, Essay on Truth, &c. 

common. — V. Term. 

COMPACT (compingo, to bind close), is that by which or to which 
men bind or oblige themselves. It is a mutual agreement 
between two or more persons to do or to refrain from doing 
something. — V. Pact, Contract. 

COMPARISON is the act of carrying the mind from one object 
to another, in order to discover some relation subsisting 
between them. It is a voluntary operation of the mind, and 
thus differs from the perception or intuition of relations, which 
does not always depend upon the will. The result of compari- 
son is knowledge, which the intellect apprehends, but the act is 
an exercise of attention voluntarily directing the energy of the 
mind to a class of objects or ideas. The theorems of mathe- 
matics are a series of judgments arrived at by comparison, or 
viewing different quantities and numbers in their relations. 
The result of comparison is a judgment. 

compassion.— F. Sympathy. 

COMPLEX.- " That which consists of several different things, so 
put together as to form a whole, is called complex. Complex 



98 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

COMPLEX— 

things are the subjects of analysis. The analysis of complex 
notions is one of the first and most important exercises of the 
understanding." — Taylor, Elements of Thought. 

COMPREHENSION means the act of comprehending or fully 
understanding any object or idea. — V. Apprehension. For 
the sense in which it is used by the logicians, V. Extension. 

COMPUNCTION (compungo, to prick or sting), is the pricking 
or uneasy feeling of the conscience on account of something 
wrong being done. "All men are subject more or less to 
compunctions of conscience." — Blair. 

" Stop up th' access and passage to remorse ; 
That no compunctious visitings of nature 
Shake my fell purpose."— Macbeth. 

CONCEIVING and APPREHENDING, or UNDERSTAND- 
ING. — Dr. Reid begins his essay on Conception by saying, 
" Conceiving, imagining, apprehending, and understanding, 
having a notion of a thing, are common words used to express 
that operation of the understanding which the logicians call 
simple apprehension." 

In reference to this it has been remarked by Mr. Mansel 
(Prolegom. Log., p. 24), that u conception must be distinguished 
as well from mere imagination, as from a mere understanding 
of the meaning of words.* Combinations of attributes logi- 
cally impossible, may be expressed in language perfectly intel- 
ligible. There is no difficulty in understanding the meaning 
of the phrase bilinear figure, or iron-gold. The language is 
intelligible, though the object is inconceivable. On the other 
hand, though all conception implies imagination, yet all imagin- 
ation does not imply conception. To have a conception of a 
horse, I must not only know the meaning of the several attri- 
butes constituting the definition of the animal, but I must also 
be able to combine these attributes in a representative image? 
that is, to individualize them. This, however, is not mere 
imagination, it is imagination relatively to a concept. I not 
only see, as it were, the image with the mind's eye, but I also 
think of it as a horse, as possessing the attributes of a given 

* These have been confounded by Aldrich, and Reid, and others. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 99 

CONCEIFINO— 

concept, and called by the name expressive of them. But 
mere imagination is possible without any such relation. My 
mind may recall a sensible impression on whose constituent 
features I have never reflected, and relatively to which I have 
never formed a concept or applied a name. Imagination 
would be possible in a being without any power of distin- 
guishing or comparing his presentations ; it is compatible with 
our ignorance or forge tfulness of the existence of any presen- 
tations, save the one represented by the image. Conception, 
in its lowest degree, implies at least a comparison and distinc- 
tion of this from that Conception proper thus holds an 
intermediate place between the intuitive and symbolical know- 
ledge of Leibnitz, being a verification of the latter by reference 
to the former." 

"The words conception, concept, notion, should be limited to 
the thought of what cannot be represented in the imagination, 
as the thought suggested by a general term. The Leibnitzians 
call this symbolical, in contrast to intuitive knowledge. This is 
the sense in which conceptio and conceptus have been usually 
and correctly employed." — Sir W. Hamilton, Reid's Works, 
p. 360, note. — V. Knowledge. 
CONCEPT, A, u is a collection of attributes, united by a sign, 
and representing a possible object of intuition." — Mansel, 
Prolegom. Log., p. 60. 

It was used, or conceit as synonymous with it, by the older 
English writers. See Baynes, Essay on Analytic of Log. Fo?*ms, 
8vo, Edin., 1850, pp. 5, 6 ; Sir W. Hamilton, Reid's Works. 
p. 393. 

Kant and his followers, while they reserve the word idea to 
denote the absolute products of the reason, and intuition to 
denote the particular notions which we derive from the senses, 
have applied the word concept {begriff) to notions which are 
general without being absolute. They say they are of three 
kinds, — 1. Pure concepts, which borrow nothing from expe- 
rience ; as the notions of cause, time, and space. 2. Empirical 
concepts, which are altogether derived from experience ; as the 
notion of colour or pleasure. 3. Mixed concepts, composed of 
elements furnished partly by experience, and partly by the 



100 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

CONCEPT— 

pure understanding. See Schmid, Dictionnaire pour servir aux 
ecrits de Kant, 12mo, Jena, 1798. 

A concept is clear, when its object, as a whole, can be 
distinguished from any other ; it is distinct, when its several 
constituent parts can be distinguished from each other. The 
merit of first pointing out these characteristics of the logical 
perfection of thought is ascribed to Leibnitz. See Meditationes 
de Cognitione, Veritate et Ideis. 
CONCEPT, CONCEPTION {conceptus, conceptio = to notio or 
notion). — " Conception consists in a conscious act of the under- 
standing, bringing any given object or impression into the 
same class with any number of other objects or impressions, by 
means of some character or characters common to them all. 
Concipimus, id est, capimus hoc cum illo — we take hold of both 
at once, we comprehend a thing, when we have learnt to com- 
prise it in a known class." — Coleridge, Church and State? 
Prelim. Rem., p. 4. 

" Conception is the forming or bringing an image or idea 
into the mind by an effort of the will. It is distinguished 
from sensation and perception, produced by an object present 
to the senses ; and from imagination, which is the joining to- 
gether of ideas in new ways ; it is distinguished from memory, 
by not having the feeling of past time connected with the 
idea." — Taylor, Elements of Thought. 

According to Mr. Stewart {Elements, vol. i., chap. 3), con- 
ception is " that faculty, the business of which is to present us 
with an exact transcript of what we have felt or perceived," 
or that faculty, whose province it is " to enable us to form a 
notion of our past sensations or of the objects of sense which 
we have formerly perceived." But what Mr. Stewart would 
thus assign to the faculty of conception belongs to imagination 
in its reproductive function. Hence Sir Will. Hamilton has 
said (Discussions, p. 276), "Mr. Stewart has bestowed on 
the reproductive imagination the term conception; happily, 
we do not think ; as, both in grammatical propriety and by the 
older and correcter usage of philosophers, this term (or rather 
the product of this operation, concept) is convertible with gen- 
eral notion, or more correctly, notion simply, and in this sense 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 101 

conception- 
Is admirably rendered by the oegriff (which is, grasped up) 
of the Germans." 

According to Kant, cognition by conception (begriff) is a 
mode of cognizing an object, when I have not the same imme- 
diately before me. If I see a tree before me, its immediate 
representation strikes upon the senses, and 1 have an intuition 
of it ; but if I represent to myself the tree by means of certain 
characteristics, which I seek for in the intuition of it, as, for 
example, the trunk, branches, and leaves, these characteristics 
are termed signs, and the complex of them is termed the 
content of the conception, and affords a mediate representation 
of the tree. The difference between pure and empirical con- 
ceptions does not concern the origin of either in time, or the 
mode whereby we come to the consciousness thereof, but the 
origin of the same, from the source and content. Hence an 
empirical conception is that which does not only arise by occa- 
sion of experience, but to which experience also furnishes the 
matter. A pure conception is that with which no sensation is 
mixed up. The conception of cause is a pure conception of 
this kind, since I have no sensible object which I would term 
Cause. 

Haywood, Crit. of Pure Reason, p. 594; Baynes, Essay on 
Analyt. of Log. Forms, pp. 5, 6. 
CONCEPTION and IMAGINATION. — "Properly and strictly 
to conceive is an act more purely intellectual than imagining, 
proceeding from a faculty superior to those of sense and fancy, 
or imagination, which are limited to corporeal things, and 
those determined, as all particulars must be, to this or that, 
place, time, manner, &c. When as that higher power in man, 
which we may call the mind, can form apprehensions of what 
is not material (viz., of spirits and the affections of bodies 
which fall not under sense), and also can frame general ideas 
or notions, or consider of things in a general way without 
attending to their particular limited circumstances, as when 
we think of length in a road, without observing its determin- 
ate measure." — Oldfield, Essay on Reason, p. 11. 

"It is one thing to imagine and another thing to conceive. 
For do we conceive anything more clearly than our thought 



102 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

CONCEPTION— 

when we think ? And yet it is impossible to imagine a thought, 
or to paint any image of it in the brain." — Port Roy. Log., part 
i., chap. 1. 

" The distinction between conception and imagination is real, 
though it be too often overlooked and the words taken to be 
synonymous. I can conceive a thing that is impossible, but I 
cannot distinctly imagine a thing that is impossible. I can 
conceive a proposition or a demonstration, but I cannot imagine 
either. I can conceive understanding and will, virtue and vice, 
and other attributes of mind, but I cannot imagine them. In 
like manner, I can distinctly conceive universals, but I cannot 
imagine them." — Reid, Intell. Pow., essay iv. 

Imagination has to do only with objects of sense, conception 
with objects of thought. The things which we imagine are 
represented to the mind as individuals, as some particular 
man, or some particular horse. The things of which we con- 
ceive are such as may be denoted by general terms, as man, 
horse. 

" The notions " (or conceptions) which the u mind forms from 
things offered to it, are either of single objects, as of ' this 
pain, that man, Westminster Abbey ; ' or of many objects 
taken together, as 'pain, man, abbey."' Notions of single 
objects are called intuitions, as being such as the mind receives 
when it simply attends to or inspects (intuetur) the object. 
Notions formed from several objects are called conceptions, as 
being formed by the power which the mind has of taking things 
together (concipere, i. e., caper e hoc cum illo). 

*' On inspecting two or more objects of the same class, we 
begin to compare them with one another, and with those which 
are already reposited in our memory ; and we discover that 
they have some points of resemblance. All the houses, for 
example, which come in our way, however they may differ in 
height, length, position, convenience, duration, have some 
common points ; they are all covered buildings, and fit for the 
habitation of men. By attending to these points only, and 
abstracting them from all the rest, we arrive at a general 
notion of a house, that it is a covered building fit for human 
habitation; and to this notion we attach a particular name, 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 103 

CONCEPTION— 

house, to remind us of the process we have gone through, and 
to record its results for use. The general notion so formed we 
call a conception ; the common points we observed in the vari- 
ous objects are called marks or notes; and the process of 
observing them and forming one entire notion from them is 
termed abstraction.'' — Thomson, Outline of Laws of Thought, p. 
105, Principles of Necessary and Contingent Truth, p. 141. 
CONCEPTION and IDEA.— By conception is meant the simple 
view we have of the objects which are presented to our mind ; 
as when, for instance, we think of the sun, the earth, a tree, a 
circle, a square, thought, being, without forming any determin- 
ate judgment concerning them ; and the form through which 
we consider these things is called an idea. 11 — Port Roy. Log. 

"The having an idea of a thing is, in common language, 
used in the same sense (as conceiving), chiefly, I think," says 
Dr. Reid, " since Mr. Locke's time. 1 ' 

" A conception is something derived from observation ; not 
so ideas, which meet with nothing exactly answering to them 
within the range of our experience. Thus ideas are a priori, 
conceptions are a posteriori; and it is only by means of the former 
that the latter are really possible. For the bare fact, taken 
by itself, falls short of the conception which may be described 
as the synthesis of the fact and the idea- Thus we have an idea 
of the universe, under which its different phenomena fall into 
place, and from which they take their meaning ; we have an 
idea of God as creator, from which we derive the power of 
conceiving that the impressions produced upon our minds, 
through the senses, result from really existing things ; we have 
an idea of the soul, which enables us to realize our own per- 
sonal identity, by suggesting that a feeling, conceiving, think- 
ing subject, exists as a substratum of every sensation, conception, 
thought." — Chretien, Essay on Log. Meth., p. 137. 

"Every conception," said Coleridge {Notes on English 
Divines, 12mo, 1853, vol. i., p. 27), " has its sole reality in its 
being referable to a thing or class of things, of which, or of the 
common characters of which, it is a reflection. An idea is a 
power, lvvoi t utc voeoa., which constitutes its own reality, and is, 
in order of thought, necessarily antecedent to the things in 



104 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

CONCEPTION— 

which it is more or less adequately realized, while a conception 
is as necessarily posterior." 

Conception is used to signify — 1. The power or faculty of 
conceiving, as when Mr. Stewart says, " Under the article of 
conception I shall confine myself to that faculty whose province 
it is to enable us to form a notion of our past sensations, or of 
the objects of sense that we have formerly perceived." 

2. The act or operation of this power or faculty. "Conception" 
says Sir John Stoddart {Univ. Gram., in Encyclop. Metropol.), 
u which is derived from con and capio, expresses the action by 
which I take up together a portion of our sensations, as it were 
water, in some vessel adapted to contain a certain quantity." 

a Conception is the act by which we comprehend by means 
of a general notion, as distinguished both from the perception 
of a present, and the imagination of an absent individual." — 
North Brit. Rev., No. 27, p. 45. 

3. The result of the operation of this power or faculty ; as 
when Dr. Whewell says (Pref. to the Philosoph. of the Induct. 
Sciences, p. 13), u our conceptions are that, in the mind, which 
we denote by our general terms, as a triangle, a square number, 
a force." 

This last signification, however, is more correctly and con- 
veniently given by the word concept, i. e., conceptum, or id quod 
conceptum est. 
CONCEPTUALISM is a doctrine in some sense intermediate 
between realism and nominalism, q. v. Have genera and species 
a real independent existence ? The Realist answers that they 
exist independently, that besides individual objects and the 
general notion from them in the mind, there exist certain ideas, 
the pattern after which the single objects are fashioned ; and 
that the general notion in our mind is the counterpart of the 
idea without it. The Nominalist says that nothing exists jDut 
things, and names of things ; and that universals are mere 
names, flatus venti. The Conceptualists assign to universals an 
existence which may be called logical or psychological, that is, 
independent of single objects, but dependent upon the mind of 
the thinking subject, in which they are as notions or concep- 
tions. — Thomson, Outline of Laws of Thought, 2d edit., p. 112. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 105 

CONCEPTUAMSUI— 

Dr. Brown, while his views approach those of the Conceptual- 
ists, would prefer to call himself a Relationalist. — See Physiol, 
of Hum. Mind, p. 295. 

Cousin, Introd. Aux Outrages Inedits d' 'Abelard, 4to, Par., 
1836, p. 181 ; Reid, Intell. Poiv., essay v., chap. 6, with Sir 
TV. Hamilton's note, p. 412. 
CONCLUSION. — When something is simply affirmed to be true, 
it is called a proposition ; after it has been found to be true, by 
several reasons or arguments, it is called a conclusion. M Sloth 
and prodigality will bring a man to want," this is a proposition ; 
after all the arguments have been mentioned which prove this 
to be true, we say, " therefore sloth and prodigality will bring 
a man to want ;" this is now the conclusion. — Taylor, Elements 
of Thought. 

That proposition which is inferred from the premises of an 
argument is called the conclusion. — Whately, Log., b. ii., ch. 3, 
§1. 
CONCRETE (concresco, to grow together), is opposed to abstract. 

A concrete notion is the notion of an object as it exists in 
nature, invested with all its qualities. An abstract notion, on 
the contrary, is the notion of some quality or attribute separ- 
ated from the object to which it belongs, and deprived of all the 
specialities with which experience invests it ; or it may be the 
notion of a substance stripped of all its qualities. In this way 
concrete comes to be synonymous with particular, and abstract 
with general. 

The names of classes are abstract, those of individuals con- 
crete; and from concrete adjectives are made abstract substan- 
tives. — V. Abstract, Term. 
CONDIGNITY.- V. MERIT. 

CONDITION — {Conditio fere siimitur pro qualitate qua quid condi 1 
id est fieri. — Vossius. Or it may be from condo, to give along 
with, i. e., something given or going along with a cause). 

A condition is that which is pre-requisite in order that some- 
thing may be, and especially in order that a cause may operate. 
A condition does not operate but by removing some impedi- 
ment, as opening the eyes to see ; or by applying one's strength 
in conjunction with another, when two men are required to 



106 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

CONDITION— 

lift or carry a weight, it being a condition of their doing so 
that their strength be exerted at the same time. A condi- 
tion is prior to the production of an effect ; but it does not 
produce it. It is fire that burns ; but, before it burns, it is 
a condition that there be an approximation of the fire to the 
fuel, or the matter that is burned. Where there is no wood 
the fire goeth out. The cause of burning is the element 
of fire, fuel is a con-cause, and the condition is the approxi- 
mation of the one to the other. The impression on the 
wax is the effect — the seal is the cause ; the pressure of the 
one substance upon the other, and the softness or fluidity of 
the wax are conditions. 

"By a condition" says Mr. Karslake (Aids to Log., vol. ii., 
p. 43), " is meant something more negative, whereas a cause is 
regarded as something more positive. We seem to think of a 
condition rather as that whose absence would have prevented 
a thing from taking place ; of a cause, rather as that whose 
presence produced it. Thus we apply, perhaps, the word 
cause rather to that between which and the result we can see 
a more immediate connection. If so, then in this way, also, 
every cause will be a condition, or antecedent, but not every 
antecedent will be a cause. The fact of a city being built of 
wood will be a condition of its being burnt down : some in- 
flammable matter having caught fire will be the cause." — V. 
Occasion. 
Condition and Conditioned (Bedingung and Bedingtes) are 
correlative conceptions. The condition is the ground which 
must be presupposed ; and what presupposes a condition is 
the conditioned, conditionate, or conditional. 

conditional. — V. Proposition, Syllogism. 

CONGRUITY (from congruo, to come together as cranes do, 
who feed and fly in companies), means the fitness or agreement 
of one thing to another. Congruity to the relations of the 
agent is given by some philosophers as the characteristic of 
all right actions. Thus there is a congruity or fitness in a 
creature worshipping his Creator, in a son honouring his father. 
In this use of the word it belongs to the theory which places 
virtue in the nature, reason, and fitness of things. — V. Merit. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 107 

CONJUGATE. — Words of the same stock or kindred, as wise, to 
be wise, wisely, are called conjugate or paronymous words. 

COMOTATIVE, A, or attributive term is one which, when 
applied to some object, is such as to imply in its signification 
some attribute belonging to that object. It connotes, i, e., 
notes along with the object (or implies), something considered 
as inherent therein ; as u The capital of France," " The founder 
of Rome." The founding of Rome is, by that appellation, at- 
tributed to the person to whom it is applied. 

A term which merely denotes an object, without implying 
any attribute of that object, is called absolute or non-conno- 
tative ; as Paris, Romulus. The latter terms denote respectively 
the same objects as the former, but do not, like them, connote 
(imply in their signification) any attribute of those individuals. 
— Whately, Log., b. ii., ch. 5, § 1 ; Mill, Log., b. i., ch. 2, 
sect. 5. 

CONSANGUINITY {con sanguis, of the same blood), is defined to 
be, vinculum personarum ab eodem stipite descendentium, the 
relation of persons descended from the same stock or common 
ancestor. It is either lineal or collateral. Lineal consanguinity 
is that which subsists between persons of whom one is de- 
scended in a direct line from the other ; as son, grandson, 
great grandson, &c. Collateral relations agree with the lineal 
in this, that they descend from the same stock or ancestor ; 
but differ in this, that they do not descend the one from the 
other. John has two sons, who have each a numerous issue ; 
both these issues are lineally descended from John, or their 
common ancestor ; and they are collateral kinsmen to each 
other, because all descended from this common ancestor, and 
all have a portion of his blood in their veins, which denominates 
them consanguineous. — V. Affinity. 

CONSCIENCE (conscientia, joint or double knowledge), means 
knowledge of conduct in reference to the law of right and 
wrong. 

" Conscience is the reason, employed about questions of 
right and wrong, and accompanied with the sentiments of 
approbation and condemnation, which, by the nature of man, 
cling inextricably to his apprehension of right and wrong." — 
Whewell, Syst. Mor. y lect. vi. 



108 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

CONSCIENCE— 

According to some, conscience takes cognizance merely of 
our own conduct. Thus Bishop Butler has said (sermon i., On 
Hum. Nature) : " The principle in man by which he approves or 
disapproves of his heart, temper, and actions, is conscience — 
for this is the strict sense of the word, though it is sometimes 
used so as to take in more." 

Locke denned conscience to be u our own judgment of the 
rectitude and pravity of our own actions." 

Dr. Rush (Inquiry into the Influence of Physical Causes upon 
the Moral Faculty, p. 3), has said: "The moral faculty exercises 
itself upon the actions of others. It approves, even in books, 
of the virtues of a Trajan, and disapproves of the vices of a 
Marius, while conscience confines its operations to our own 
actions." 

" The word c conscience ' does not immediately denote any 
moral faculty by which we approve or disapprove. Conscience 
supposes, indeed, the existence of some such faculty, and pro- 
perly signifies our consciousness of having acted agreeably or 
contrary to its directions." — Smith, Theory of Mor. Sent, pt. 
vii., sect. 3. 

" Conscience coincides exactly with the moral faculty, with 
this difference only, that the former refers to our own conduct 
alone, whereas the latter is meant to express also the power by 
which we approve or disapprove of the conduct of others." — 
Stewart, Act. Pow., pt. i., ch. 2. See also Payne, Elements 
of Mor. Science, 1845, p. 283. 

By these writers conscience is represented as being the func- 
tion of the moral faculty in reference to our own conduct, and 
as giving us a consciousness of self-approbation or of self- 
condemnation. 

By a further limitation of the term, conscience has been re- 
garded by some as merely retrospective in its exercise ; and 
by a still further limitation as only, or chiefly, punitive in its 
exercise, and implying the consciousness of our having acted 
wrong. 

But of late years, and by the best writers, the term con- 
science, and the phrases moral faculty, moral judgment, faculty 
of moral perception, moral sense, susceptibility of moral emo- 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 109 

CONSCIENCE— 

tion, have all been applied to that faculty, or combination of 
faculties, by which we have ideas of right and wrong in 
reference to actions, and correspondent feelings of approbation 
and disapprobation. This faculty, or combination of faculties, 
is called into exercise not merely in reference to our own con- 
duct, but also in reference to the conduct of others. It is not 
only reflective but prospective in its operations. It is antecedent 
as well as subsequent to action in its exercise ; and is occupied 
de faciendo as well as de facto. — See Eeid, Act. Pow., essay 
hi., pt. iii., ch. 8. 

In short, conscience constitutes itself a witness of the past 
and of the future, and judges of actions reported as if present 
when they were actually done. It takes cognizance not merely 
of the individual man, but of human nature, and pronounces 
concerning actions as right or wrong, not merely in reference 
to one person, or one time, or one place, but absolutely and 
universally. 

With reference to their views as to the nature of conscience 
and the constitution of the moral faculty, modern philosophers 
may be arranged in two great schools or sects. The difference 
between them rests on the prominence and precedence which 
they assign to reason and to feeling in the exercise of the moral 
faculty; and their respective theories may be distinctively de- 
signated the intellectual theory and the sentimental theory. A 
brief view of the principal arguments in support of each may 
be found in Hume's Inquiry concerning the Principles of 
Morals, sect. 5. 
CONSCIOUSNESS (conscientia, joint knowledge, a knowledge of 
one thing in connection or relation with another). 

Sir William Hamilton has remarked (Discussions, p. 110, 
note,) that "the Greek has no word for consciousness" and 
that u Tertullian is the only ancient who uses the word con- 
scientia in a psychological sense, corresponding with our 
consciousness.' 1 '' — Reid^s Works, p. 775. 

The meaning of a word is sometimes best attained by means 
of the word opposed to it. Unconsciousness, that is, the want 
or absence of consciousness, denotes the suspension of all our 
faculties Consciousness, then, is the state in which we are 



110 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

CONSCIOUSNE SS— 

when all or any of our faculties are in exercise. It is the 
condition or accompaniment of every mental operation. 

The scholastic definition was, perceptio qua mens de presenti 
suo statu admonetur. 

" Consciousness is the necessary knowledge which the mind 
has of its own operations. In knowing, it knows that it 
knows. In experiencing emotions and passions, it knows that 
it experiences them. In willing, or exercising acts of causality, 
it knows that it wills or exercises such acts. This is the com- 
mon, universal, and spontaneous consciousness." . . . " By 
consciousness more nicely and accurately defined, we mean the 
power and act of self-recognition : not if you please, the mind 
knowing its knowledges, emotions, and volitions ; but the mind 
knowing itself in these." — Tappan, Doctrine of the Will by an 
Appeal to Consciousness, chap. 2, sect. 1. 

Mr. Locke has said {Essay on Hum. Understand., book ii., 
ch. 1), " It is altogether as intelligible to say that a body is 
extended without parts, as that anything thinks without being 
conscious of it, or perceiving that it does so. They who talk 
in this way, may, with as much reason, say that a man is 
always hungry, but that he does not always feel it ; whereas 
hunger consists in that very sensation, as thinking consists in 
being conscious that one thinks ! " 

u We not only feel, but we know that we feel; we not only 
act, but we know that we act ; we not only think, but we know 
that we think ; to think, without knowing that we think, is as 
if we should not think ; and the peculiar quality, the funda- 
mental attribute of thought, is to have a consciousness of itself. 
Consciousness is this interior light which illuminates everything 
that takes place in the soul ; consciousness is the accompani- 
ment of all our faculties ; and is, so to speak, their echo." — 
Cousin, Hist, of Mod. Philosophy vol. i., pp. 274-5. 

On consciousness as the necessary form of thought, see lecture 
v. of the same volume. 

That consciousness is not a particular faculty of the mind, 
but the universal condition of intelligence, the fundamental 
form of all the modes of our thinking activity, and not a 
special mode of that activity, is strenuously maintained by 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. Ill 

COlfSCIOlTSXESS— 

Amadee Jacques, in the Mann.: 1 do P : ikscaAk. Partk Ps\ 
logique ; and also by two American writers. Mr. Bowen in 
his Critical L*>:: is. p. 131. and Mr. Tappan. This view is in 
accordance with the saving of Aristotle, cjz hrr> u, 
mUSqweas — there is not a feeling : a feeling ; and that oi the 
schoolmen — "A. >-; lir.ius. ii? : . 5-: ".'..: .5 no? sentire — .'. 
?. isi .':."-::- 05 i teii >ere." '• Xo man." said 
Dr. Reid. "can perceive an object without being conscious 
that he perceives it. Xo man can think, without being con- 
scious that he thinks." And as on the one hand we c. 
think or feel without being conscious, so on the other hand we 
cannot be conscious without thinking or feeling. This would 
be. if possible, to be conscious oi nothing, to have a consci<. ?- 
ness which was no consciousness, or consciousness without an 
object. "Annihilate the object of any mental operation and 
you annihilate the operation: annihilate the conscious 
the object, and you annihilate the operation." 

This view of ce ■.seious :ess. as the common condition under 
which all our faculties are brought into operation, or of 
considering these faculties and their operations as so many 
modifications 01 conscie :.sr.e??. has oi late been generally 
adopted : so much so, that psychology, or the science oi 
mind, has been denominated an inquiry into the tacts ot 
consciousr.es?. All that we can truly learn of mind must be 
learned by attending to the various ways in which it becomes 
conscious. Xone of the phenomena oi csnsciousness ; 
called in question. The}" may be more or less clear — more or 
less complete : but they either are or are not. 

In the Diet, do? Scie ices Philese '... art. "Conscience," it is 
main: .^> is a separate faculty, having self. 

or the ego, for its object. 

Instead of rt .. > . . >v as the common condition 

or accompaniment of every mental operation. Rojer Collard 
and Adolphe Gamier among the French, and Reid and Stewart 
among the Scotch philosophers, have been represented ifl 
holding the opinion that c set 1 s is 1 separate faculty, 
having for its objects the operations of our other faculties. 
."' says Dr. Reid {Intel!. Pvo... essay L, chap. 1 . 



112 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

CONSCIOUSNESS— 

see also essay vi., chap. 5), u is a word used by philosophers to 
signify that immediate knowledge which we have of our present 
thoughts and purposes, and in general, of all the present ope- 
rations of our minds. Whence we may observe that conscious- 
ness is only of things present. To apply consciousness to things 
past, which sometimes is done, in popular discourse, is to 
confound consciousness with memory; and all such confusion 
of words ought to be avoided in philosophical discourse. It 
is likewise to be observed that consciousness is only of things 
in the mind, and not of external things. It is improper to 
say, 'I am conscious of the table which is before me.' I perceive 
it, I see it, but do not say I am conscious of it. As that con- 
sciousness by which we have a knowledge of the operations of 
our own minds, is a different power from that by which we 
perceive external objects ; and as these different powers have 
different names in our language, and, I believe, in all lan- 
guages, a philosopher ought carefully to preserve this distinc- 
tion and never confound things so different in their nature." 
In this passage Dr. Reid speaks of consciousness properly so 
called as that consciousness which is distinct from the conscious- 
ness by which we perceive external objects — as if perception 
was another kind or mode of consciousness. Whether all his 
language be quite consistent with the opinion that all our 
faculties are just so many different modes of our becoming 
conscious, may be doubted. But there is no doubt that by 
consciousness he meant especially attention to the operations 
of our own minds, or reflection; while by observation he meant 
attention to external things. This language has been inter- 
preted as favourable to the opinion that consciousness is a 
separate faculty. Yet he has not distinctly separated it from 
reflection except by saying that consciousness accompanies all 
the operations of mind. Now reflection does not. It is a 
voluntary act — an energetic attention to the facts of conscious- 
ness. But consciousness may be either spontaneous or reflective. 
" This word denotes the immediate knowledge which the 
mind has of its sensations and thoughts, and, in general, of all its 
present operations." — Outlines ofMor. Philosophy parti., sect. 1. 
Mr. Stewart, in his Outlines, has enumerated consciousness 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 113 

CONSCIOUSNESS— 

as one of our intellectual powers, co-ordinate with perception, 
memory, judgment, &c. But consciousness is not confined to 
the operation of the intellectual powers. It accompanies the 
development of the feelings and the determinations of the will. 
And the opinion that consciousness is a separate faculty, is not 
only founded on a false analysis, but is an opinion, which if 
prosecuted to its results would overturn the doctrine of 
immediate knowledge in perception — a doctrine which Stewart 
and Eeid upheld as the true and only barrier against the 
scepticism of Hume. " Once admit that, after I have per- 
ceived an object, I need another power termed consciousness, 
by which 1 become cognizant of the perception, and by the 
medium of which the knowledge involved in perception is 
made clear to the thinking self, and the plea of common sense 
against scepticism is cut off. .... I am conscious of 
self and of notself; my knowledge of both in the act of per- 
ception is equally direct and immediate. On the other hand, 
to make consciousness a peculiar faculty, by which we are 
simply cognizant of our own mental operations, is virtually to 
deny the immediatecy of our knowledge of an external world." 
— Morell, Hist, of Spec. Philosophy vol. ii., p. 13. 

"We may give consciousness a separate name and place, 
without meaning to degrade it to the level of the other facul- 
ties. In some respects it is superior to them all, having in it 
more of the essence of the soul, and being exercised whenever 
the soul is intelligently exercised." — M'Cosh, Method of Div. 
Govern., p. 533, fifth edition. 

See Fearn, Essay on Consciousness. 
CONSCIOUSNESS and FEELIXG. — " Feeling and sensation are 
equivalent terms, the one being merely the translation of the 
other ; but feeling and consciousness are not equivalent, for we 
are conscious that we feel, but we do not feel that we are 
conscious. Consciousness is involved in all mental operations, 
active or passive ; but these are not therefore kinds or parts 
of consciousness. Life is involved in every operation, volun- 
tary or involuntary, of our bodily system ; but movement or 
action are not, therefore, a species of life. Consciousness 
mental life." — Agonistes ; or, Philosophical Strictures, p. 336. 
I 



114 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

CONSENT.— " Believing in the prophets and evangelists with a 
calm and settled faith, with that consent of the will, and heart, 
and understanding, which constitutes religious belief, I find in 
them the clear annunciation of the kingdom of God upon earth." 
— Southey, Progress of Society, colloquy 2. 

Assent is the consequence of a conviction of the understand- 
ing. Consent arises from the state of the disposition and the 
will. The one accepts what is true ; the other embraces it as 
true and good, and worthy of all acceptation. — V. Assent. 
CONSENT (Argument from Universal).— V. AUTHORITY. 

Reid applies this argument to establish first principles. — 
Intell. Pow., essay i., chap. 2. He uses it against the views of 
Berkeley and Hume. — Essay ii., chap. 19. 

Cicero {Be Officiis, lib. i., cap. 41,) says, Major enim pars eo 
fere deferri solet quo a natura deducitur. It is used to prove 
the existence of the gods. De quo autem omnium natura con- 
sentit, id verum esse necesse est. Esse igitur deos, confitendum 
est. {De Nat. Deorum, lib. i., cap. 17,) Cotta argues against 
it, cap. 23. The argument is also used (De Nat. Deor., lib. ii., 
2 ; and Tuscul. Qumst., lib. i., 13), where we read, Omni autem 
in re, consensio omnium gentium lex natural putanda est. 

Bacon is against this argument in the preface to his Instau- 
ratio Magna, in aphorism 77, and in Cogitata et Visa. 

"These things are to be regarded as frst truths, the credit 
of which is not derived from other truths, but is inherent 
in themselves. As for probable truths, they are such as are 
admitted by all men, or by the generality of men, or by ivise 
men ; and among these last, either by all the wise, or by the 
generality of the wise, or by such of the wise as are of the 
highest authority." — Aristotle, Topic, L, 1. 

Multum dare solemus prcesumptioni omnium hominum. Apud 
nos veritatis argumentum est aliquid omnibus videri. — Seneca, 
Epist., cvii., cxvii. 
CONSEQUENT.— V. ANTECEDENT, NECESSITY. 
CONSILIENCE of INDUCTIONS takes place when an induction 
obtained from one class of facts coincides with an induction 
obtained from a different class. This consilience is the test of 
the truth of the theory in which it occurs. — Whewell, PJiilosoph. 
Induct. Sciences, aphorism 14. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 115 

CONSILIENCE— 

Paley's Horce Paulince, which consists of gathering together 
undesigned coincidences, is an example of the consilience of 
inductions. 

u The law of gravitation may be proved by a consilience of 
inductions." — Quarterly Rev., vol. xlviii., p. 233. 

CONSTITUTIVE (in German, constitutiv), means objectively 
determining, or legislating. It is a predicate which expresses 
that something a priori determines how something else must 
be, or is to be. That which is constitutive is opposed to that 
which is regulative — q. v. 

CONTEMPLATION (contemplor) , means originally to gaze on 
a shire of the heavens marked out by the augur. — Taylor, 
Synonyms. " The next faculty of the mind (i. e., to percep- 
tion), whereby it makes a further progress towards know- 
ledge, is that which I call retention, or the keeping of these 
simple ideas which from sensation or reflection it hath re- 
ceived. This is done two ways ; first, by keeping the idea 
which is brought into it for some time actually in view, which 
is called contemplation" — Locke, Essay on Hum. Understand., 
book ii., chap. 10. 

When an object of sense or thought has attracted our admira- 
tion or love we dwell upon it ; not so much to know it better, 
as to enjoy it more and longer. This is contemplation, and 
differs from reflection. The latter seeks knowledge, and our 
intellect is active. In the former, we think we have found the 
knowledge which reflection seeks, and luxuriate in the enjoy- 
ment of it. Mystics have exaggerated the benefits of contem- 
plation, and have directed it exclusively to God, and to the 
cherishing of love to Him. 

CONTINENCE (contineo, to restrain), is the virtue which consists 
in governing the appetite of sex. It is most usually applied to 
men, as chastity is to women. Chastity may be the result of 
natural disposition or temperament — continence carries with it 
the idea of struggle and victory. 

CONTINGENT (contingo, to touch). — " Perhaps the beauty of 
the world requireth that some agents should work without 
deliberation (which his lordship calls necessary agents), and 
some agents with deliberation (and those both he and I call 



116 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

CONTINGENT— 

free agents), and that some agents should work, and we know 
not how (and their effects we call contingents)" — Hobbes, 
Liberty and Necessity. 

" When any event takes place which seems to us to have no 
cause, why it should happen in one way, rather than another, 
it is called a contingent event ; as, for example, the falling of a 
leaf on a certain spot, or the turning up of any particular 
number when the dice are thrown." — Taylor, Elements of 
Thought. 

The contingent is that which does not exist necessarily, and 
which we can think as n on- existing without contradiction. 
Everything which had a beginning, or will have an end, or 
which changes, is contingent. The necessary, on the contrary ? 
is that which we cannot conceive as non-existing — that which 
has always been, which will always be, and which does not 
change its manner of being. 

" Contingent is that which does not happen constantly and 
regularly. Of this kind ancient philosophy has distinguished 
three different opinions ; for either the event happens more 
frequently one way than another, and then it is said to be \n\ 
to 7t6Xv ; of this kind are the regular productions of nature, 
and the ordinary actions of men. Or it happens more rarely, 
such as the birth of monsters, or other extraordinary produc- 
tions of nature, and many accidents that happen to man. Or, 
lastly, it is betwixt the two, and happens as often the one way 
as* the other ; or, as they express it in Greek, oTrorep krv%n* 
Of this kind are some things in nature, such as the birth of a 
male or female child ; a good or bad day in some climates of 
the earth ; and many things among men, such as good or bad 
luck at play. All these last-mentioned events are in reality as 
necessary as the falling of heavy bodies, &c. But as they do 
not happen constantly and uniformly, and as we cannot account 
for their happening sometimes one way and sometimes another, 
we say they are contingent." — Monboddo, Ancient Metaphys., 
vol. i., p. 295. 

The contingent is known empirically — the necessary by the 
reason. There are but two modes of being, the necessary and 
the contingent. But the contingent has degrees : 1. Simple 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 117 

COXTHVOENT— 

facts which appear and disappear, or, in the language of the 
Schools, accidents. 2. Qualities or properties inherent in a 
substance, which constitute its specific character. 3. The 
substance itself considered as a particular and finite existence. 
A thing may be contingent in three ways : — 

1. jEqualiter, when the thing or its opposite may equally be, 
from the determination of a free will. 

2. Ut plurimum, as when a man is born with five digits, 
though sometimes with more or less. 

3. Raro, as when it happens seldom ; by a necessary agent, as 
when a tile falls on a man's head ; or by a free agent, as when 
a man cleaving wood wounds the bystander. — See Chauvin, 
Lexicon Philosoph. 

An event, the opposite of which is possible, is contingent. 

An event, the opposite of which is impossible, is necessary. 

An event is impossible when the opposite of it is necessary. 

An event is possible when the opposite of it is contingent 
CONTINUITY (Xaw of). — "The supposition of bodies perfectly 
hard, having been shown to be inconsistent with two of the 
leading doctrines of Leibnitz, that of the constant maintenance 
of the same quantity of force in the universe, and that of the 
proportionality of forces to the squares of the velocities — he 
found himself reduced to the necessity of maintaining that all 
changes are produced by insensible gradations, so as to render 
it impossible for a body to have its state changed from motion 
to rest, or from rest to motion, without passing through all the 
intermediate states of velocity. From this assumption he 
argued with much ingenuity, that the existence of atoms, or of 
perfectly hard bodies, is impossible ; because, if two of them 
should meet with equal and opposite motions, they would 
necessarily stop at once, in violation of the law of continuity" 
— Stewart, Dissert, part ii., p. 275. 

"I speak," said John Bernouilli (Discourse on Motion, 1727), 
" of that immovable and perpetual order established since 
the creation of the universe, which may be called the law 
of continuity, in virtue of which everything that is done, is 
done by degrees infinitely small. It seems to be the dictate 
of good sense that no change is made per saltum; natura 



118 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

CONTINUITY— 

non operatur per saltum; and nothing can pass from one 
extreme to another without passing through all the interme- 
diate degrees." 

The law of continuity, though originally applied to continuity 
of motion, was extended by Charles Bonnet to continuity of 
being. He held that all the various beings which compose the 
universe, form a scale descending downwards without any 
chasm or saltus, from the Deity to the simplest forms of unor- 
ganized matter. A similar view had been held by Locke and 
others {Spectator, IsTo. 519). The researches of Cuvier have 
shown that it can only be held with limitations and exceptions, 
even when confined to the comparative anatomy of animals. — 
V. Association. 
CONTRACT {contralto, to draw together). — A contract is an 
agreement or pact in which one party comes under obligation 
to do one thing, and the other party to do some other thing. 
Paley calls it a mutual promise. Contracts originate in the 
insufficiency of man to supply all his needs. One wants what 
another has abundance of and to spare ; while the other may 
want something which his neighbour has. Men are drawn 
more closely together by their individual insufficiency, and they 
enter into an agreement each to give what the other needs or 
desires. 

Contracts being so necessary and important for the welfare 
of society, the framing and fulfilling of them have in all coun- 
tries been made the object of positive law. Viewed ethically, 
the obligation to fulfil them is the same with that to fulfil a 
promise. The consideration of contracts, and of the various 
kinds and conditions of them belongs to Jurisprudence. 

While all contracts are pacts, all pacts are not contracts. In 
the Roman law, a distinction was taken between pacts or 
agreements entered into without any cause or consideration 
antecedent, present or future, and pacts which were entered 
into for a cause or consideration, that is, containing a Gwoik- 
Kaypoi, or bargain, or as it may be popularly expressed, a quid 
pro quo — in which one party came under obligation to give or 
do something, on account of something being done or given by 
the other party. Agreements of the latter kind were properly 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 119 

CONTRACT- 

contracts, while those of the former were called bare pacts. A 
pactum nudum, or bare pact, was so called because it was not 
clothed with the circumstances of mutual advantage, and was 
not a valid agreement in the eye of the Roman law. Nuda 
pactio obligationem non facit. It is the same in the English law, 
in which a contract is defined : u An agreement of two or more 
persons, upon sufficient consideration, to do or not to do a par- 
ticular thing," — and the consideration is necessary to the valid- 
ity of the contract. 
contradiction, Principle ©f (eontradico, to speak against). 
— It is usually expressed thus : A thing cannot be and not be 
at the same time, or a thing must either be or not be, or the 
same attribute cannot at the same time be affirmed and denied 
of the same subject. — Pierron and Zevort, Introd. a la 
Metapliys. oVAristote, 2 torn., Paris, 1840. — V. Identity. 

Aristotle laid down this principle as the basis of all Logic 
and of all Metaphysic. 

Leibnitz thought it insufficient as the basis of all truth and 
reasoning, and added the principle of the sufficient reason — q. v. 

Kant thought this principle good only for those judgments 
of which the attribute is the consequence of the subject, or, as 
he called them, analytic judgments ; as when we say, all body 
has extension. The idea of extension being enclosed in that 
of body, it is a sufficient warrant of the truth of such a judg- 
ment, that it implies no contradiction. But in synthetic 
judgments, we rest either on a belief of the reason or the 
testimony of experience, according as they are a priori or a 
posteriori. — Aristot., Metapliys., lib. hi., cap. 3 ; lib. ix., cap. 
7 ; lib. x., cap. 5. 

" The law of contradiction vindicates itself. It cannot be 
denied without being assented to, for the person who denies 
it must assume that he is denying it, in other words, he must 
assume that he is saying what he is saying, and he must admit 
that the contrary supposition — to wit, that he is saying what 
he is not saying — involves a contradiction. Thus the law is 
established." — Ferrier, Inst of Metapliys., p. 21. 

It has also been called the law of non-contradiction. It is 
one and indivisible, but develops itself in three specific forms. 



120 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

CONTRADICTION- 

which have been called the Three Logical Axioms. First, 
" A is A." Second, "A is not Not- A." Third, " Everything 
is either A or Not-A." This last is sometimes called the Law 
of Excluded Middle — q. v. 

The principle of contradiction is the same with the Dictum 
de omni et nullo — q. v. See Poste, Poster. Analyt., Appendix A. 
CONTRARIES. — Aristotle {De Anima, lib. iii., cap. 3), says — 
u There seems to be one and the same error, and one and the 
same science, with respect to things contrary." This, by 
Themistius, in his Paraphrase, is thus illustrated : — " Of things 
contrary there is one science and one ignorance. For thus, he 
who knows good to be something beneficial, knows evil at the 
same time to be something pernicious ; and he who is deceived 
with respect to one of these, is deceived also with respect to 
the other." 

u There is an essential difference between opposite and con- 
trary. Opposite powers are always of the same kind, and tend 
to union either by equipoise or by a common product. Thus 
the + and the — poles of the magnet, thus positive and nega- 
tive electricity, are opposites. Sweet and sour are opposites ; 
sweet and bitter are contraries. The feminine character is 
opposed to the masculine ; but the effeminate is its contrary ." — 
Coleridge, Church and State, note, p. 18. 

We should say opposite sides of the street, not contrary. 

Aristotle defines contrary, " that which in the same genus 
differs most ;■" as in colour, white and black ; in sensation, 
pleasure and pain ; in morals, good and evil. Contraries 
never co-exist, but they may succeed in the same subject. 
They are of two kinds, one admitting a middle term, partici- 
pating at once in the nature of the things opposed. Thus, 
between absolute being and nonentity, there may be contin- 
gent being. In others no middle term is possible. There are 
contraries of which the one belongs necessarily to a subject, or 
is a simple privation, as health and sickness ; light and dark- 
ness ; sight and blindness. Contraries which admit of no middle 
term are contradictories ; and form, when united, a contradiction. 
On this rests all logic. Aristotle wished to make virtue a middle 
term, between two extremes. — Diet, des Sciences Philosoph. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 121 

CONVERSION, in Logic, is the transposition of the subject of a 
proposition into the place of the predicate, and of the predi- 
cate into the place of the subject. The proposition to be con- 
verted is called the convertend or exposita, and that into which 
it is converted the converse. Logical conversion is illative, 
that is, the truth of the convertend necessitates the truth of the 
converse. It can only take place when no term is distributed 
in the converse which was undistributed in the convertend. It 
is of three kinds, viz., simple conversion, conversion per accidens, 
and conversion by negation or contraposition. — Whately, Log., 
b. ii., ch. 2, § 4. 

COPUIiA (The) is that part of a proposition which indicates that 
the predicate is affirmed or denied of the subject. This is 
sometimes done by inflection ; as when we say, Fire burns ; 
the change from burn to burns showing that we mean to affirm 
the predicate burn of the subject fire. But this function is 
more commonly fulfilled by the word is, when an affirmation is 
intended — is not, when a negation ; or by some other part of 
the verb to be. Sometimes this verb is both copula and pre- 
dicate, e. g., " One of Jacob's sons is not." But the copula, 
merely as such, does not imply real existence, e. g., " A fault- 
less man is a being feigned by the Stoics." — Whately, Log., b. ii., 
ch. 1, § 3. Mill., Log., b. i., ch. 4, § 1. 

COSMOGONY (Koapog, world; ytyvo t uoc(, to come into being). — 
" It was a most ancient, and, in a manner, universally received 
tradition among the Pagans, that the cosmogonia, or generation 
of the world, took its first beginning from a chaos (the divine 
cosmogonists agreeing therein with the atheistic ones) : this tra- 
dition having been delivered down from Orpheus and Linus 
(among the Greeks) by Hesiod and Homer, and others." — 
Cudworth, Intell SysL, p. 248. 

The different theories as to the origin of the world may be 
comprehended under three classes : — 

1. Those which represent the world, in its present form, as 
having existed from eternity. — Aristotle. 

2. Those which represent the matter but not the form of the 
world to be from eternity. — Leucippus, Democritus, Epicurus. 

3. Those which assign both the matter and form of the world 
to the direct agency of a spiritual cause. 



122 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

COSMOGONY- 

" Cosmogony treats of the birth, cosmography of the descrip- 
tion, and cosmology of the theory of the world." — Taylor, 
Synonyms. 
COSMOLOGY, Rational.-— V. METAPHYSICS. 

CRANioiiOOY.— 7. Phrenology. 

cranioscopy. — V. Phrenology, Organ, Organology. 

CREATION is the act by which God produced out of nothing all 
things that now exist. Unless we deny altogether the existence 
of God, we must either believe in creation or accept one or other 
of the two hypotheses, which may be called theological dualism 
and pantheism. According to the former, there are two necessary 
and eternal beings, God and matter. According to the latter, 
all beings are but modes or manifestations of one eternal and 
necessary being. A belief in creation admits only the existence 
of one necessary and eternal being, who is at once substance 
and cause, intelligence and power, absolutely free and infinitely 
good. God and the universe are essentially distinct. God 
has self-consciousness, the universe has not and cannot have. 
— Diet des Sciences Philosoph. 

CREDULITY, or a disposition to believe what others tell us, is 
set down by Dr. Reid as an original principle implanted in us 
by the Supreme Being. And as the counterpart of this he 
reckons veracity or a propensity to speak truth and to use 
language so as to convey our real sentiments, to be also an 
original principle of human nature. — Reid, Inquiry, chap. 6, 
§ 24; and also Act. Pow., essay iii., pt. i., chap. 2; Stewart, 
Act. Pow., vol. ii., p. 344; Priestley, Exam., p. 86; Brown, 
Lect. lxxxiv. 

CRITERION (k£itv)oiqv, from the Greek verb xg/jw, to judge), 
denotes in general, all means proper to judge. It has been 
distinguished into the criterion a quo, per quod, and secundum 
quod — or the being who judges, as man ; the organ or faculty 
by which he judges, and the rule according to which he judges. 
Unless utter scepticism be maintained, man must be admitted 
capable of knowing what is true. 

u With regard to the criterion (says Edw. Poste, M.A., In- 
trod., p. 14, to trans, of Poster. Analyt. of Aristotle), or organ 
of truth among the ancient philosophers, some advocated a 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 123 

CRITERION— 

simple and others a mixed criterion. The advocates of the 
former were divided into Sensationalists or Kationalists, as they 
advocated sense or reason ; the advocates of the latter advo- 
cated both sense and reason. Democritus and Leucippus 
were Sensationalists ; Parmenides and the Pythagoreans were 
Rationalists ; Plato and Aristotle belonged to the mixed school. 
Among those who advocated reason as a criterion, there was 
an important difference : some advocating the common reason, 
as Heraclitus and Anaxagoras ; others, the scientific reason, 
or the reason as cultivated and developed by education, as 
Parmenides, the Pythagoreans, Plato, and Aristotle. In the 
Republic (7, sect. 9), Plato prescribes a training calculated to 
prepare the reason for the perception of the higher truths. 
Aristotle requires education for the moral reason. The older 
Greeks used the word measure, instead of criterion; and Pro- 
tagoras had said, that man was the measure of all truth. This 
Aristotle interprets to mean that sense and reason are the 
organs of truth (Metapliys., x. 2 ; xi. 6), and he accepts the 
doctrine, if limited to these faculties in a healthy and perfect 
condition. These names, then, cannot properly be ranked 
among the common sense philosophers, where they are placed 
by Sir William Hamilton. 

" When reason is said to be an organ of truth, we must in- 
clude, besides the intuitive, the syllogistic faculty. This is the 
instrument of the mediate or indirect apprehension of truth, 
as the other of immediate. The examination of these instru- 
ments, in order to discover their capabilities and right use, is 
Logic. This appears to be the reason why Aristotle gave the 
title of Organon to his Logic. So Epicurus called his the Canon 
or Criterion.'''' The controversy on the Criterion'^, to be found 
at length in Sextus Empiricus, Hijpot., lib. ii., cap. 5-7. 

Criterion is now used chiefly to denote the character which 
distinguishes truth from falsity. In this sense it corresponds 
with the ground of certitude. — V. Certitude. 
CRITICK, CRITICISM, CRITIQUE (German, critik), is 
the examination of the pure reason, and is called in Germany 
simply the critick or critik, x«t' e%oxfl*- It is the science of 
the pure faculty of reason, or the investigation of that which 



124 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

CRITICK- 

reason is able to know or effect, independently of experience, 
and is opposed to dogmatism. Sir J. Mackintosh terms the 
critical philosophy a self- reviewing philosophy. 

CUMULATIVE (The Argument). — " The proof of a Divine agency 
is not a conclusion which lies at the end of a chain of reason- 
ing, of which chain each instance of contrivance is only a link, 
and of which, if one link fail, the whole falls ; but it is an 
argument separately supplied by every separate example. An 
error in stating an example affects only that example. The 
argument is cumulative in the fullest sense of that term. The 
eye proves it without the ear, the ear without the eye. The 
proof in each example is complete ; for when the design of the 
part, and the conduciveness of its structure to that design is 
shown, the mind may set itself at rest ; no future consideration 
can detract anything from the force of the example." — Paley, 
Nat. Theol, chap. 6. 

CUSTOM. — u Let custom" says Locke, "from the very childhood, 
have joined figure and shape to the idea of God, and what 
absurdities will that mind be liable to about the Deity." — 
Essay on Hum, Understand., book ii., chap. 33, 17 ; and book 
i., chap. 4, 16. 

Custom is the queen of the world. 



"Such precedents are numberless; we draw 
Our right from custom ; custom is a law 
As high as heaven, as wide as seas or land." 

Lansdown, Beauty and Law. 



A custom is not necessarily a usage. A custom is merely 
that which is often repeated ; a usage must be often repeated 
and of long standing. Hence we may speak of a u new custom" 
but not of a " new usage" Custom had probably the same 
origin as " accost," to come near, and thence to be habitual. 
The root is the Latin costa, the side or rib. — See Karnes, 
Elements of Criticism, chap. 14 ; Sir G. C. Lewis, On Politics 
chap. 20, sect 9. 

" An aggregate of habits, either successive or cotempora- 
neous, in different individuals, is denoted by the words custom, 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 125 

CUSTOM— 

usage, or practice* When many persons — either a class of 
society, or the inhabitants of a district, or an entire nation — 
agree in a certain habit, they are said to have a custom or 
usage to that effect. 

u Customs may be of two kinds : — First, There may be vol- 
untary customs — customs which are adopted spontaneously by 
the people, and originate from their independent choice, such 
as the modes of salutation, dress, eating, travelling, &c, pre- 
valent in any country, and most of the items which constitute 
the manners of a people. — Secondly, There are the customs 
which are the result of laws — customs which have grown up in 
consequence of the action of the government upon the people. 
Thus, when successive judges in a court of justice have laid 
down certain rules of procedure, and the advocates pleading 
before the court have observed these rules, such is called the 
established practice of the court. The sum of the habits of the 
successive judges and practitioners constitute the practice of the 
court. The same may be said of a deliberative assembly, or 
any other body, renewed by a perpetual succession of its mem- 
bers. In churches the equivalent name is rites and ceremonies." 
— V. Habit. 

Custom is a frequent repetition of the same act ; habit is the 
effect of such repetition: fashion is the custom of numbers; 
usage is the habit of numbers. It is a good custom to rise early ; 
this will produce a habit of so doing; and the example of a 
distinguished family may do much toward reviving ike fashion, 
if not re-establishing the usage. — Taylor, Synonyms. 

Usage has relation to space, and custom to time ; usage is 
more universal, and custom more ancient ; usage is what many 
people practise, and custom is what people have practised long. 
A vulgar usage ; an old custom. — Ibid. 
CYNIC. — After the death of Socrates, some of his disciples, under 
Antisthenes, were accustomed to meet in the Cynosarges, one 
of the gymnasia of Athens, — and hence they were called Cynics. 
According to others, the designation comes from xvojv, a dog, 

* A similar distinction between mos and consuetudo is made by Macrobius, Saturn. 
iii., 8, commenting on Virgil, JEneid, 6, 601. He quotes Varro as stating that mot 
unit, and consuetudo the resulting aggregate. 



126 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

CYNIC— 

because like the dog they were destitute of all modesty. An- 
tisthenes, Diogenes, and Crates were the first heads of the 
sect. Zeno, by checking and moderating their doctrines, gave 
birth to the sect of Stoics. 

Richterus, Dissertatio de Cynicis, Leips., 1701 ; Diogenes 
Laertius, lib. vi., c. 103. 



I>iEUI©NIST. — "To believe the governing mind, or minds, not 
absolutely and necessarily good, nor confined to what is best, 
but capable of acting according to mere will or fancy, is to be 
a Doemonist" — Shaftesbury, Inquiry concerning Virtue, book i., 
pt. i., sect. 2. 

DATA (the plural of datum — given or granted). — u Those facts 
from which an inference is drawn, are called data ; for example, 
it has always been found that the inhabitants of temperate 
climates have excelled those of very hot or very cold climates 
in stature, strength, and intelligence : these facts are the data, 
from which it is inferred that excellence of body and mind 
depend, in some measure, upon the temperature of the 
climate." — Taylor, Elements of Thought. 

©EDUCTION (from deduco, to draw from, to cause to come out 
of), is the mental operation which consists in drawing a par- 
ticular truth from a general principle antecedently known. It 
is opposed to induction, which consists in rising from parti- 
cular truths to the determination of a general principle. Let 
it be proposed to prove that Peter is mortal ; I know that 
Peter is a man, and this enables me to say that all men 
are mortal: from which affirmation I deduce that Peter is 
mortal. 

The syllogism is the form of deduction. Aristotle (Prior. 
Analyt., fib. L, cap. 1), has defined it to be u an enunciation 
in which certain assertions being made, by their being true, it 
follows necessarily, that another assertion different from the 
first is true also." 

Before we can deduce a particular truth we must be in pos- 
session of the general truth. This may be acquired intuitively, 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 127 



f EDUCTION— 
as every change implies a cause ; or inductively, as the volume 
of gas is in the inverse ratio of the pressure. 
Deduction, when it uses the former kind of truths, is demon- 
stration or science. Truths drawn from the latter kind are 
contingent and relative, and admit of correction by increasing 
knowledge. 

The principle of deduction is, that things which agree with 
the same thing agree with one another. The principle of 
induction is, that in the same circumstances, and in the same 
substances, from the same causes the same effects will follow. 

The mathematical and metaphysical sciences are founded on 
deduction, the physical sciences rest on induction. 

For the different views of deduction and induction, see Whe- 
well, Philosoph. of Induct. Sciences, book i., chap. 6 ; Mill, 
Log., book ii., chap. 5 ; Quarterly Rev., vol. lxviii., art. on 
"Whewell." 

DE FACTO and I>E JURE. — In some instances the penalty 
attaches to the offender at the instant when the fact is com- 
mitted ; in others, not until he is convicted by law. In the 
former case he is guilty de facto, in the latter de jure. 

Be facto is commonly used in the sense of actually or really, 
and de jure in the sense of rightfully or legally ; as when it is 
said George II. was king of Great Britain de facto; but 
Charles Stuart was king de jure, 
DEFINITION (definio, to mark out limits). — Est definitio, earum 
rerum, quce sunt ejus rei proprice, quam definire volumus, brevis 
et circumscripta qucedam explicatio. — Cicero, De Or at., lib. i., 
c. 42. 

"The simplest and most correct notion of a definition is, a 
proposition declaratory of the meaning of a word." — Mill, Log., 
2d edit., vol. i, p. 182. 

Definition signifies " laying down a boundary;" and is used 
in Logic to signify " an expression which explains any term so 
as to separate it from everything else, as a boundary separates 
fields. Logicians distinguish definitions into Nominal and 
Real. 

" Definitions are called nominal, which explain merely the 
meaning of the term ; and real, which explain the nature of the 



128 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

DEFINITION— 

thing signified by that term. Logic, is concerned with nominal 
definitions alone." — Whately, Log., b. ii., ch. 2, § 6. 

" By a real, in contrast to a verbal or nominal definition, the 
logicians do not intend * the giving an adequate conception of 
the nature and essence of a thing ; ' that is, of a thing con- 
sidered in itself, and apart from the conceptions of it already 
possessed. By verbal definition is meant the more accurate 
determination of the signification of a word ; by real the more 
accurate determination of the contents of a notion. The one 
clears up the relation of words to notions ; the other of notions 
to things. The substitution of notional for real would, perhaps, 
remove the ambiguity. But if we retain the term real, the 
aim of a verbal definition being to specify the thought denoted 
by the word, such definition ought to be called notional, on the 
principle on which the definition of a notion is called real ; for 
this definition is the exposition of what things are compre- 
hended in a thought." — Sir Will. Hamilton, Reid's Works, 
p. 691, note. 

" In the sense in which nominal and real definitions were 
distinguished by the scholastic logicians, logic is concerned 
with real, i. e., notional definitions only; to explain the mean- 
ing of words belongs to dictionaries or grammars." — Mansel, 
Prolegom. Log., p. 189. 

" There is a real distinction between definitions of names 
and what are erroneously called definitions of things ; but it 
is that the latter, along with the meaning of a name, covertly 
asserts a matter of fact. This covert assertion is not a defini- 
tion, but a postulate. The definition is a mere identical pro- 
position, which gives information only about the use of lan- 
guage, and from which no conclusions respecting matters of 
fact can possibly be drawn. The accompanying postulate, on 
the other hand, affirms a fact which may lead to consequences 
of every degree of importance. It affirms the real existence 
of things, possessing the combination of attributes set forth in 
the definition, and this, if true, may be foundation sufficient to 
build a whole fabric of scientific truth." — Mill, Log., p. 197. 

Real definitions are divided into essential and accidental. 
An essential definition states what are regarded as the con- 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 129 

>EFHVITION— 

stituent parts of the essence of that which is to be defined ; and 
an accidental definition (or description) lays down what are 
regarded as circumstances belonging to it, viz., properties or 
accidents, such as causes, effects, &c. 

"Essential definition is divided into physical (natural), and 
logical (metaphysical) ; the physical definition being made by 
an enumeration of such parts as are actually separable ; such 
as are the hull, masts, &c, of a 'ship;' the root, trunk, 
branches, bark, &c, of a 'tree.' The logical definition consists 
of the genus and difference, which are called by some the 
metaphysical (ideal) parts ; as being not two real parts into 
which an individual object can (as in the former case), be 
actually divided, but only different views taken (notions 
formed) of a class of objects, by one mind. Thus a magnet 
would be defined logically, 4 an iron ore having attraction for 
iron/ " — Whately, Log., b. ii., ch. 5, § 6. 

Accidental or descriptive definition, may be — 1. Causal; as 
when man is defined as made after the image of God, and for 
his glory. 2. Accidental; as when he is defined to be animal, 
bipes implume. 3. Genetic; as when the means by which it is 
made are indicated ; as, if a straight line fixed at one end be 
drawn round by the other end so as to return to itself, a circle 
will be described. Or, 4. Per oppositum ; as, when virtue is 
said to be flying from vice. 

The rules of a good definition are : — 1. That it be adequate. 
If it be too narrow, you explain a part instead of a whole ; if 
too extensive, a iclwle instead of a part. 2. That it be 
clearer (i.e., consist of ideas less complex) than the thing de- 
fined. 3. That it be in just a sufficient number of proper 
words. Metaphorical words are excluded because they are 
indefinite. — Hansel's Aldrich., p. 35. 

Aristotle, Poster. Analyt., lib. ii. ; Topic, lib. vi. ; Port 
Royal Log., part i., chap. 12, 13, 14 ; part ii., chap. 16 ; Locke, 
Essay on Hum. Understand., book iii., c. 3 and 4 ; Leibnitz, 
Noveaux Essais, liv. iii., cap. 3 et 4 ; Reid, Account of Aris- 
totle's Logic, chap. 2, sect. 4 ; Tappan, Appeal to Conscious- 
ness, chap. 2, § 1. 

K 



130 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

JOE 1ST (Deus, God). — There are different kinds of deists noticed 
by Dr. Sam. Clarke, Works, vol. ii., p. 12. 

1. Those who believe in an Eternal and Intelligent Being, 
but deny a Providence, either conserving or governing. 

2. Those who believe in God and in Providence, but deny 
moral distinctions and moral government. 

3. Those who believe in God and His moral perfections, but 
deny a future state. 

4. Those who believe in God and His moral government, 
here and hereafter, in so far as the light of nature goes ; but 
doubt or deny the doctrines of revelation. 

Kant has distinguished between a theist and a deist — the 
former acknowledging a God, free and intelligent, the creator 
and preserver of all things ; the latter believing that the first 
principle of all things is an Infinite Force, which is inherent in 
matter, and the blind cause of all the phenomena of nature. 
Deism, in this sense, is mere materialism. But deism is gene- 
rally employed to denote a belief in God, without implying a 
belief in revelation. 

u That modern species of infidelity, called deism, or natural 
religion, as contradistinguished from revealed.'' 1 — Van Mildert, 
Bampton Led., sermon ix. 

u Tindal appears to have been the first who assumed for 
himself, and bestowed on his coadjutors, the denomination of 
Christian deists, though it implied no less than an absolute 
contradiction in terms." — Yan Mildert, Bampton Led., 
sermon x. 

See Leland, View of Deistical Writers. — V. Theist. 
[DEMIURGE: QtYipiovgyosi workman, architect). — Socrates and 
Plato represented God as the architect of the universe. Plo- 
tinus confounded the demiurge with the soul of the world, and 
represented it as inferior to the supreme intelligence. The 
Gnostics represented it as an emanation from the supreme 
divinity, and having a separate existence. The difficulty of 
reconciling our idea of an infinite cause to the variable and 
contingent effects observable in the universe has given rise to 
the hypotheses of a demiurge, and of a plastic nature ; but 
they do not alleviate the difficulty. This term is applied to 
God, Heb. xi. 10. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 131 

DEMON ^etifAav). — " The demon kind is of an intermediate nature 
between the divine and human. What is the power and 
virtue, said I, of this intermediate kind of being ? To trans- 
mit and to interpret to the gods, what comes from men ; aud 
to men, in like manner, what comes from the gods ; from 
men their petitions and their sacrifices ; from the gods, in 
return, the revelation of their will." — Sydenham, Plato, The 
Banquet. 

Socrates declared that he had a friendly spirit, or Demon, 
who restrained him from imprudence, and revealed to him 
what was true. Plutarch has a Dialogue on the Demon of 
Socrates, and Apuleius also wrote De Deo Socratis. In 
modern times we have Lelut, Du Demon de Socrate, Paris, 
1836, 1856. He thinks Socrates was subject to hallucinations 
of sight and hearing. 

DEMONSTRATION (demonstro, to point out, to cause to see).- 
In old English writers this word was used to signify the pointing 
out the connection between a conclusion and its premises, or 
that of a phenomenon with its asserted cause. It now denotes 
a necessary consequence, and is synonymous with proof from 
first principles. To draw out a particular truth from a general 
truth in which it is enclosed, is deduction ; from a necessary 
and universal truth to draw consequences which necessarily 
follow, is demonstration. To connect a truth with a first prin- 
ciple, to show that it is this principle applied or realized in a 
particular case, is to demonstrate. The result is science, 
knowledge, certainty. Those general truths arrived at by 
induction in the sciences of observation, are certain know- 
ledge. But it is knowledge which is not definite or complete. 
It may admit of increase or modification by new discoveries : 
but the knowledge which demonstration gives is fixed and 
unalterable. 

A demonstration is a reasoning consisting of one or more 
arguments, by which some proposition brought into question 
is evidently shown to be contained in some other proposition 
assumed, whose truth and certainty being evident and acknow- 
ledged, the proposition in question must also be admitted as 
certain. 

Demonstration is direct or indirect. Direct demonstration is 



132 VOCABULAEY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

DEMONSTRATION— 

descending — when starting from a general truth we come to a 
particular conclusion, which we must affirm or deny ; or 
ascending — when starting from the subject and its attributes, 
we arrive by degrees at a general principle, with which we 
connect the proposition in question. Both these are deductive, 
because they connect a particular truth with a general prin- 
ciple. Indirect demonstration is when we admit hypothetically 
a proposition contradictory of that which we wish to demon- 
strate, and show that this admission leads to absurdity ; that is, 
an impossibility or a contradiction. This is, demonstratio per 
impossible, or reductio ad absurdum. It should only be employed 
when direct demonstration is unattainable. 

"Demonstration was divided by ancient writers into two 
kinds : one kind they called demonstration on ; the other 
demonstration lion. 

" The demonstration lion, or argument from cause to effect, 
is most commonly employed in anticipating future events. 
When, e.g., we argue that at a certain time the tides will be 
unusually high, because of its being the day following the new 
or the full moon, it is because we know that that condition of 
the moon is in some way connected as a cause with an unusually 
high rising of the tides as its effect, and can argue, therefore, 
that it will produce what is called spring tide. 

" On the other hand, the demonstration on, or argument 
from effect to cause, is more applicable, naturally, to past 
events, and to the explanation of the phenomena which they 
exhibit as effects. Thus the presence of poison in the bodies 
of those whose death has been unaccountably sudden, is 
frequently proved in this way by the phenomena which such 
bodies present, and which involve the presence of poison as 
their cause." — Karslake, Aids to Logic, vol. ii., p. 46. 

The theory of demonstration is to be found in the Organon of 
Aristotle, "since whose time," said Kant, "Logic, as to its 
foundation, has gained nothing." 

DENOMINATION, External.— V. MODE. 

DEONTOJL.OOY (to Ikv, what is due, or binding; Koyog, dis- 
course). 

" Deontology, or that which is proper, has been chosen as a 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 133 

DEONTOLOGY- 

fitter term than any other which could be found, to represent, 
in the field of morals, the principle of utilitarianism, or that 
which is useful." — Bentham, Deontology; or, the Science of 
Morality, vol. i., p. 34. 

••The term deontology expresses moral science, and expresses 
it well, precisely because it signifies the science of duty, and 
contains no reference to utility." — Whewell, Preface to 
Mackintosh's Prelim. Dissert., p. 20. 

Deontology involves the being bound or being under obliga- 
tion ; the very idea which it was selected to avoid, and which 
utility does not give. 

"The ancient Pythagoreans defined virtue to be v E^tg rov 
Z'iovrog (that is, the habit of duty, or of doing what is binding), 
the oldest definition of virtue of which we have any account, 
and one of the most unexceptionable which is yet to be found 
in any system of philosophy." — Stewart, Act. and Mor. Powers, 
vol- ii., p. 446. 

And Sir W. Hamilton (Raid's Works, p. 540, note) has 
observed that ethics are well denominated deontology. 
»ESlON (clesigno, to mark out), — u The atomic atheists further 
allege, that though there be many things in the world which 
serve well for uses, yet it does not at all follow that therefore 
they were made intentionally and designedly for those uses." — 
Cudworth, Intell. Syst., p. 670. 

;t What is done, neither by accident, nor simply for its own 
sake, but with a view to some effect that is to follow, is said to 
be the result of design. Xone but intelligent beings act with 
design ; because it requires knowledge of the connection of 
causes and effects, and the power of comparing ideas, to con- 
ceive of some end or object to be produced, and to devise the 
means proper to produce the effect. Therefore, whenever we 
see a thing which not only may be applied to some use, but 
which is evidently made for the sake of the effect which it 
produces, we feel sure that it is the work of a being capable of 
thought.''— Taylor, Elements of Thought. 

" When we find in nature the adaptation of means to an end, 
we infer design and a designer ; because the only circumstances 
in which we can trace the origination of adaptation, are those 



134 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

»ESION— 

in which human mind is implicated." — Dove, Theory of Hum. 
Progression, p. 482. 

On the argument for the being of God from the evidences 
of design, or the adaptation of means to ends in the universe, 
see Xenophon, Memorabilia of Socrates, book i., chap. 4 ; 
Buffier, Treatise on First Truths, part ii., chap. 16 ; Reid, Act. 
Pow. f essay vi., chap. 6 ; Stewart, Act and Mor. Pow., book 
iii., chap. 2; Paley, Nat. Theol; Bridgewater Treatises; 
Burnett Prize Essays. — V. Cause (Final). 
DESIRE. — " Desire may be defined that uneasy sensation excited 
in the mind by the view or by the contemplation of any desir- 
able good which is not in our possession, which we are solicitous 
to obtain, and of which the attainment appears at least possible." 
— Cogan, On Passions, part i., chap. 2, sect. 3. 

According to Dr. Hutcheson {Essay on the Passions, sect, i.), 
u desires arise in our mind from the frame of our nature, upon 
apprehension of good or evil in objects, actions, or events, 
to obtain for ourselves or others the agreeable sensation when 
the object or event is good ; or to prevent the uneasy sensation 
when it is evil." 

But, while desires imply intelligence, they are not the mere 
efflux, or product of that intelligence ; and, while the objects 
of our desires are known, it is not, solely, in consequence of 
knowing them, that we desire them ; but, rather, because we 
have a capacity of desiring. There is a tendency, on our part, 
towards certain ends or objects, and there is a fitness in them 
to give us pleasure, when they are attained. Our desires of 
such ends or objects are natural and primary. Natural, but 
not instinctive, for they imply intelligence ; primary, and not 
factitious, for they result from the constitution of things, and 
the constitution of the human mind, antecedent to experience 
and education. 

It has been maintained, however, that there are no original 
principles in our nature, carrying us towards particular objects, 
but that, in the course of experience, we learn what gives us 
pleasure or pain — what does us good or ill — that we flee from 
the one class of objects, and follow after the other; that 
in this way, likings and dislikings — inclination and aversion, 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 135 

DESIRE— 

spring up within us ; and that all the various passions and 
pursuits of human life are produced and prompted by sensi- 
bility to pleasure and pain, and a knowledge of what affects 
that sensibility ; and thus, all our desires may be resolved into 
one general desire of happiness or well-being. 

There is room for difference of opinion as to the number of 
those desires which are original ; but there is little room for 
doubting, that there are some which may be so designated. 
Every being has a nature. Everything is what it is, by having 
such a nature. Man has a nature, and his nature has an end. 
This end is indicated by certain tendencies. He feels inclina- 
tion or desire towards certain objects, which are suited to his 
faculties and fitted to improve them. The attainment of these 
objects gives pleasure, the absence of them is a source of 
uneasiness. Man seeks them by a natural and spontaneous 
effort. In seeking them, he comes to know them better and 
desire them more eagerly. But the intelligence which is gradu- 
ally developed, and the development which it may give to the 
desires, should not lead us to overlook the fact, that the desires 
primarily existed, as inherent tendencies in our nature, aiming at 
their correspondent objects ; spontaneously, it may be, in the 
first instance, but gradually gaining clearness and strength, by 
the aid and concurrence of our intellectual and rational powers. 

DESTINY (destinatum, fixed), is the necessary and unalterable 
connection of events ; of which the heathens made a divine 
power, superior to all their deities. The idea of an irresistible 
destiny, against which man strives in vain, pervades the whole 
of Greek tragedy. — V. Fatalism. 

DETERMINISM. — This name is applied by Sir W. Hamilton 
(Reid's Works, p. 601, note) to the doctrine of Hobbes, as 
contradistinguished from the ancient doctrine of fatalism. The 
principle of the sufficient reason is likewise called by Leibnitz 
the principle of the determining reason. In the Diet, des 
Sciences Philosophy nothing is given under determinism, but a 
reference made to fatalism.* And fatalism is explained as 

* But in the article " Liberie," determinism is applied.to the doctrine that motives invin- 
cibly determine the will, and is opposed to liberty of indifference, which is described as 
the doctrine that man can determine himself without motives. 



136 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

DETERMINISM— 

the doctrine which denies liberty to man. — Y. Necessity, 
Fatalism, Liberty. 

I>IAIiECTl€ (dialektik) is the logic of appearance as distinguished 
from universal Logic, or it may be that which teaches us to 
excite appearance or illusion. As logical or formal it treats of 
the sources of error and illusion, and the mode of destroying 
them ; as transcendental, it is the exposure of the natural and 
unavoidable illusion that arises from human reason itself, which 
is ever inclined to look upon phenomena as things in them- 
selves, and cognitions a priori, as properties adhering to these 
things, and in such way to form the super- sensible, according 
to this assumed cognition of things in themselves." — Haywood, 
Transl. of Kant, p. 596. 

" How to divide and subdivide, and dissect, and analyze a 
topic, so as to be directed to the various roads of argument 
by which it may be approached, investigated, defended, or 
attacked, is the province of dialectic. How to criticise those 
arguments, so as to reject the sophistical, and to allow their 
exact weight to the solid, is the province of Logic. The 
dialectician is praised in proportion as his method is exhaustive ; 
that is, in proportion as it supplies every possible form of argu- 
ment applicable to the matter under discussion. The logician 
is praised in proportion as his method is demonstrative; that 
is, in proportion as it determines unanswerably the value 
of every argument applied to the matter under discussion. 
Dialectic provides, and Logic appreciates argumentation; 
dialectic exercises the invention, and Logic the judgment." — 
Taylor, Synonyms. 

dialectics (&/aA£*T/x*j rip^). — u The Greek verb S/aAsy- 
ep&etii in its widest signification, — 1. Includes the use both of 
reason and speech as proper to man. Hence dialectics may 
mean Logic, as including the right use of reason and language. 
2. It is also used as synonymous with the Latin word disserere, 
to discuss or dispute ; hence, dialectics has been used to denote 
the Logic of probabilities, as opposed to the doctrine of demon- 
stration and scientific induction. 3. It is also used in popular 
language to denote Logic properly so called. But dialectics, 
like science, is not Logic, but the subject matter of Logic. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 137 

DIALECTICS— 

Dialectics is handled, anatomized, and its conditions determined 
by Logic : but, for all that, it is not Logic, any more than 
the animal kingdom is Zoology, or the vegetable kingdom is 
Botany." — Poste, Introd. to Poster. Analyl, p. 16. 12mo. 
London. 1850. 

'•Xenophon tells us (Mem., iv. 5, 11), that Socrates said, 
• That dialectic (to ltttki'/&r6ot.i) was so called because it is an 
inquiry pursued by persons who take counsel together, separ- 
ating the subjects considered according to then- kinds (oix,- 
/.iyovTci;). He held accordingly that men should try to be 
well prepared for such a process, and should pursue it with 
diligence. By this means he thought they would become good 
men. fitted for responsible offices of command, and truly dia- 
lectical' (biOLkzx.TixaTa.Twg). And this is, I conceive, the 
answer to Mr. Grote's interrogatory exclamation (vol. viii., p. 
577). ' Surely the etymology here given by Xenophon or 
Socrates of the word (oia?.iy-:7^ca). cannot be considered as 
satisfactory.' The two notions, of investigatory dialogue and 
distribution of notions according to them kinds, which are thus 
asserted to be connected in etymology, were, among the follow- 
ers of Socrates, connected in fact: the dialectic dialogue was 
supposed to involve of course the dialectic division of the sub- 
ject.*' — Dr. "Wile well. On Plato's Notion of Dialectic, Trans, of 
Camh. PhUosoph. Soc, vol. ix., part 4. 

DIAIVOIOLOGY — V. XoOLOGY. 

DICHOTOMY (or/.oTouicc, cutting in two, division into two parts, 
logically), is a bimembral division. — "Our Saviour said to 
Pilate, w Sayest thou this thing of thyself, or did others tell 
thee?' And all things reported are reduceable to this dicho- 
tomic, — 1. The fountain of invention. 2. The channel of rela- 
tion.*' — Fuller. Worthies, vol. i., c. 23. 

••The divisions of Peter Ramus always consisted of two 
members, one of which was contradictory of the other, as if 
one should divide England into Middlesex." In a note on this 
passage, Sir William Hamilton says, M There is nothing new in 
Ramus' Dichotomy by contradiction. It was, in particular, a 
favourite with Plato.*' — ReicTs Works, p. 689. 

"Every division, however complex, is reducible at each of 



138 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

DICHOTOMY— 

its steps to a Dichotomy ; that is, to the division of a class into 
two sub -classes, opposed to each other by contradiction. The 
term X, if divisible positively by several terms, of which Y is 
one, is divisible also by the terms Y and not Y. " — Spalding, 
Logic, p. 146. 

DICTUM »E OMNI ET NUULO may be explained to mean 
" whatever is predicated (i. e., affirmed, or denied) universally 
of any class of things, may be predicated in like manner (viz., 
affirmed, or denied) of anything comprehended in that class." 
— V. Contradiction. 

DICTUM SIMPJLICITER. — When a term or proposition is to 
be understood in its plain and unlimited sense, it is used simpli- 
citer; when with limitation or reference, it is said to be used 
secundum quid — q. v. 

DIFFERENCE (liatpogK, differentia). — When two objects are 
compared they may have qualities which are common to both, 
or the one may have qualities which the other has not. The 
first constitutes their resemblance, the second their difference. 
If the qualities constituting their resemblance be essential 
qualities, and the qualities constituting their difference be 
merely accidental, the objects are only said to be distinct ; but 
if the qualities constituting their difference be essential quali- 
ties, then the objects are different.* One man is distinct from 
another man, or one piece of silver from another ; but a man is 
different from a horse, and gold is different from silver. Those 
accidental differences which distinguish objects whose essence 
is common, belong only to individuals, and are called individual 
or numerical differences. Those differences which cause ob- 
jects to have a different nature, constitute species, and are 
called specific differences. The former are passing and vari- 
able ; but the latter are permanent and form the objects of 
science, and furnish the grounds of all classification, division, 
and definition — q. v. 

" Difference or differentia, in Logic, means the formal or 

distinguishing part of the essence of a species." When I say 

that the differentia of a magnet is a its attracting iron," and 

that its property is " polarity," these are called respectively, a 

* Derodon, Be Universalibus, seems to use differentia and distinctio indiscriminately. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 139 

DIFFERENCE — 

specific difference and property ; because magnet is (I have sup- 
posed) an infima species (i. e., only a species). When I say 
that the differentia of iron ore is "its containing iron," and its 
property * l being attracted by the magnet," these are called 
respectively, a generic difference and property, because "iron 
ore" is a subaltern species or genus; being both the genus of 
magnet, and the species of mineral." — Whately, Log., book 
ii., chap. 5, § 4. 

The English word divers expresses difference only, but diverse 
expresses difference with opposition. The Evangelists narrate 
the same events in "divers manners," but not in " diverse 
manners.' 1 '' 

Porphyry, Introd. to Categor.; Arist., Top., lib. vii., c. 1, 2. 
— V. Distinction. 
DILEJUIA is a syllogism with a conditional premiss, in which 
either the antecedent or consequent is disjunctive. When an 
affirmative is proved, the Dilemma is said to be in the modus 
ponens, and the argument is called constructive ; when a 
negative is proved, the Dilemma is said to be in the modus 
tellens, and the argument is called destructive. Of the con- 
structive dilemma there are two sorts — the simple, which con- 
cludes categorically, and the complex, which has a disjunctive 
conclusion. There is but one sort of the true destructive 
dilemma. 

The dilemma is used to prove the absurdity or falsehood of 
some assertion. A conditional proposition is assumed, the an- 
tecedent of which is the assertion to be disproved, while the 
consequent is a disjunctive proposition enumerating the suppo- 
sitions on which the assertion can be true. Should the suppo- 
sition be rejected, the assertion also must be rejected. If A is 
B, either C is D or E is F. But neither C is D nor E is F ; 
therefore, A is not B. 

This syllogism was called the Syllogismus Cornatus, the two 
members of the consequent being the horns of the dilemma, 
on which the adversary is caught between Q>L*~hoiy.$QiviTa.i) 
two difficulties. And it was called dilemma, quasi It; "hoLp- 
fixvav, according to others it was so called from l!g, twice, 
and 'A'/jcccix, an assumption, because in the major premise there 



140 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

DILEMMA- 

are generally two antecedents, which in the minor become two 
assumptions. 

The hypothetico- disjunctive syllogism, or dilemma, must not 
be confounded with the sophism called dilemma, in which, by a 
fallacy, two contradictories seem to be proved. 

discovery. — V. Invention. 

»ISCURSUS — "If the mind do not perceive intuitively the con- 
nection betwixt the predicate and subject, as in the case of 
axioms, or self-evident propositions, it can do so no otherwise 
than by the intervention of other ideas, or by the use of middle 
terms, as they are called, in the language of Aristotle. And 
this application of the middle term, first to one of the terms of 
a proposition, and then to the other, is performed by that ex- 
ercise of the intellect which is very properly called in Greek 
diKvota, because the intellect in this operation goes betwixt 
the two terms, as it were, and passes from the one to the other. 
In Latin, as there is not the same facility of composition, it is 
expressed by two words, discursus mentis, mens being the same 
thing in Latin as NoD^ in Greek; and the Latin expression is 
rendered into English by discourse of reasoning, or as it is 
commonly called, reasoning." — Monboddo, Ancient Metaphys., 
book v., ch. 4. 

" Reasoning (or discourse) is the act of proceeding from 
certain judgments to another founded on them (or the result of 
them.)"— Whately, Log., book ii., ch. 1, §. 2. 

disjunctive. — V. Proposition, Syllogism. 

DISPOSITION (liafoaig, dispositio), according to Aristotle (Meta- 
phys., lib. iv., cap. 19), is the arrangement of that which has 
parts, either according to place, or to potentiality, or accord- 
ing to species ; for it is necessary that there be a certain posi- 
tion, as also the name disposition makes manifest." 

As applied to mind, it supposes the relation of its powers and 
principles to one another, and means the resultant bias, or 
tendency to be moved by some of them rather than by others. 
Mind is essentially one. But we speak of it as having a 
constitution and as containing certain primary elements ; and, 
according as these elements are combined and balanced there 
may be differences in the constitution of individual minds, just 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 141 

DISPOSITION— 

as there are differences of bodily temperaments; and these dif- 
ferences may give rise to a disposition or bias, in the one case, 
more directly in the other. According as intellect, or sensi- 
tivity, or will, prevails in any individual mind, there will be a 
correspondent bias resulting. 

But it is in reference to original differences in the primary 
desires, that differences of disposition are most observable. 
Any desire, when powerful, draws over the other tendencies of 
the mind to its side ; gives a colour to the whole character of 
the man, and manifests its influence throughout all his temper 
and conduct. His thoughts run in a particular channel, with- 
out his being sensible that they do so, except by the result. 
There is an under- current of feeling, flowing continually within 
him, which only manifests itself by the direction in which it 
carries him. This constitutes his temper.* Disjjosition is the 
sum of a man's desires and feelings. 
DISTINCTION (liocl^eatg) is wider in signification than differ- 
ence; for all things that are different are also distinct; but all 
things that are distinct are not also different. One drop of 
water does not specifically differ from another ; but they are 
individually distinct 

Distinction is a kind of alietas or otherness. Those thino-s 
are said to be distinct of which one is not the other. Thus 
Peter, precisely because he is not Paul, is said to be distinct 
from Paul. Union is not opposed to distinction; for things 
may be so united that the one shall not be confounded with the 
other. Thus the soul is united to the body. Indeed union 
implies distinction; it is when two thiugs which are mutuallv 
distinct become, as it were, one. 

Distinction is real and mental, a parte rei and per intellectum. 
Real distinction is founded in the nature of the thinor and 
amounts to difference. It is threefold : — 1. Object from object 
— as God from man. 2. Mode from mode — as blue from black. 
3. Mode from thing— as body from motion. Mental distinction 
is made by the mind — as when we distinguish between light 
and heat, which are naturally united, or between the length and 

* "The balance of our animal principles, I think, constitutes what we call a man's 
natural temper."— Reid, Act. Pow., essay iii., part ii., ch. 8. 



142 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

DISTINCTION— 

breadth of a body. It amounts to abstraction. — Bossuet, Log., 
liv. i., c. 25; Reid, Account of Aristotle' 's Logic, ch. 2, sect. 3. 

" Separation by the touch (dis and tango) makes a distinc- 
tion; by turning apart (dis and vertd) makes a diversity ; by 
carrying asunder (dis and fero) makes a difference; by affixing 
a mark (dis and crimen) makes a discrimination. Distinction, 
therefore, is applied to delicate variations; diversity to glaring 
contrasts; difference to hostile unlikenesses ; and discrimina- 
tion to formal criticism." — Taylor, Synonyms. 
DISTRIBUTION — " is the placing particular things in the places 
or compartments which have already been prepared to receive 
them." — Taylor, Elements of Thought. 

M In Logic, a term is said to be distributed when it is em- 
ployed in its full extent, so as to comprehend all its significates 
— everything to which it is applicable." — Whately, Logic, b. ii., 
ch. 3, § 2. 

a A term is said to be ''distributed, 1 when an assertion is 
made or implied respecting every member of the class which the 
term denotes. Of every universal proposition, therefore, the 
subject is distributed; e. g., all men are mortal; No rational 
being is responsible ; Whatsoever things were written aforetime 
were written for our learning. When an assertion is made or 
applied respecting some member or members of a class, but 
not necessarily respecting all, the term is said to be ; undis- 
tributed ; ' as, for example, the subjects of the following pro- 
positions : — Some men are benevolent ; There are some standing 
here that shall not die ; Not every one that invokes the sacred 
name shall enter into the heavenly kingdom." — Kidd, Prin- 
ciples of Reasoning, ch. 4, sect. 3, p. 179. 

u When the whole of either term (in a proposition) is com- 
pared with the other, it is said, to be distributed; when apart 
only is so compared, it is said to be undistributed. In the pro- 
position l All, A is B,' the term A is distributed ; but in the 
proposition c Some, A is B,' it is undistributed."— Solly, Syll. 
of Log., p. 47. 

The rules for distribution are : — 

1. All universal propositions, and no particular, distribute 
the subject. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. * 143 

DISTRIBUTION— 

2. All negative, and no affirmative, the predicate. — Wesley, 
Guide to Syllogism, p. 10. 

" A singular term can never denote anything less than the 
object of which it is a name. A common term may be under- 
stood as denoting all, or fewer than all, of the objects of the 
class. When it denotes all, it is said to be taken universally, 
or to be distributed; that is, to be spread over the whole class, 
or to be applied to all the objects distributively — not collec- 
tively — to each, not to all together. When it denotes fewer 
than all the objects of the class, it is said to be taken particu- 
larly, or to be undistributed" — Spalding, Log., p. 57. 

DITHEISM. — " As for that fore-mentioned ditheism, or opinion 
of two gods — a good and an evil one, it is evident that its 
original sprung from nothing else, but from a firm persuasion 
of the essential goodness of Deity, &c." — Cudworth, Intell. 
System, p. 213. — V. Dualism. 

DIVISION — "is the separating things of the same kind into 
parcels ; analysis is the separating of things that are of differ- 
ent kinds; we divide a stick by cutting it into two, or into 
twenty pieces ; we analyze it by separating the bark, the wood, 
and the pith — a division may be made at pleasure, an analysis 
must be made according to the nature of the object." — Taylor. 
Elements of Thought. 

Division is either division proper or partition. Partition is the 
distribution of some substance into its parts ; as of the globe 
into Europe, Asia, Africa, and America. Division proper is the 
distribution of genus and species into what is under them ; as 
when substance is divided into spiritual and material. The 
members which arise from division retain the name of their 
whole ; but not those from partition. 

" Division is the separation of a whole into its parts. 
" But as there are two kinds of ivholes, there are also two 
kinds of division. There is a whole composed of parts really 
distinct, called in Latin, totum, and whose parts are called 
integral parts. The division of this whole is called properly 
partition; as when we divide a house into its apartments, a 
town into its wards, a kingdom or state into its provinces, man 
into body and soul, the body into its members. The sole rule 



144 # VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

DIVISION— 

of their division is, to make the enumeration of particulars 
very exact, and that there be nothing wanting to them. 

"The other whole is called, in Latin, omne, and its parts 
subjected or inferior parts, inasmuch as the whole is a common 
term, and its parts are the terms comprising its extension. 
The word animal is a whole of this nature, of which the 
inferiors, as man and beast, which are comprehended under 
its extension, are subjected parts. This division obtains pro- 
perly the name of division, and there are four kinds of division 
which may be noticed. 

" The first is, when we divide the genus by its species; every 
substance is body or mind, every animal is man or beast. The 
second is, when we divide the genus by its differences; every 
animal is rational or irrational, every number is even or 
uneven. The third is, when we divide a common subject into 
the opposite accidents of which it is susceptible, these being- 
according to its different inferiors, or in relation to different 
times ; as, every star is luminous by itself, or by reflection 
only ; every body is in motion or at rest, &c. The fourth is, 
that of an accident into its different subjects, as division of 
goods into those of mind and body." — Port Roy. Log., part h., 
chap. 15. 

" Division (Logical) is the distinct enumeration of several 
things signified by one common name. It is so called from its 
being analogous to the real division of a whole into its parts." 
— Whately, Log., bookii.,ch. 5, § 5. 

The rules of a good division are :— 

1. Each of the parts, or any, short of all, must contain less 
(i. e., have a narrower signification) than the thing divided. 
"Weapon" could not be a division of the term "sword." 2. 
All the parts taken together must be exactly equal to the 
thing divided. In dividing the term "weapon " into "sword," 
"pike," "gun," &c, we must not omit anything of which 
"weapon" can be predicated, nor introduce anything of which 
it cannot. 3. The parts, or members, must be opposed, i. e., 
must not be contained in one another. " Book" must not be 
divided into "Quarto," "French;" for a French book maybe 
a quarto, and a quarto French. It may be added, that a divi- 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 145 

DIVISION— 

sion should proceed throughout upon the same principle. 
Books may be divided according to size, language, matter, &c, 
all these being so many cross-divisions. 

Aristotle. Poster. AnoJyt.. lib. ii., c. 13 ; Eeid, Account of 
Aristotle's Logic, chap, ii., sect. 2. — V. Whole, Fallacy. 

DIVORCE (diverto) to separate), is a separation, especially of 
husband and wife. It is used to signify, — 1. Separation 
of a married pan without any right of re-marriage. 2. The 
like separation with that right : and 3. The declaratory sentence, 
pronouncing a marriage to have been void ah initio — that is, 
never to have existed in law. — Paley (Jfor Phil, b. hi., pt. hi., 
c. 7). understands by divorce. '" the dissolution of the marriage 
contract by the act and at the will of the husband." — Quarterly 
Rev., Xo. 203. p. 256. 

DOGIttATlSJI (liypx, from loxsa, to think). — "Philosophers." 
said Lord Bacon, " may be divided into two classes, the 
empirics and the dogmatists. The empiric, like the ant. is 
content to amass, and then consume his provisions. The 
dogmatist, like the spider, spins webs of which the materials are 
extracted from his own substance, admirable for the delicacy 
of their workmanship, but without solidity or use- The bee 
keeps a middle course — she draws her matter from flowers and 
gardens : then, by art peculiar to her, she labours and digests 
it. True philosophy does something like this." 

u He who is certain, or presumes to say he knows* is ? whe- 
ther he be mistaken or in the right, a dogmatist.'' — Shaftesbury. 
Mixcdl. Reflect.. MiseeU. ii.. c. 2. 

Kant defined dogmatism, "the presumption that we are able 
to attain a pure knowledge based on ideas, according to prin- 
ciples which the reason has long had in use, without any 
inquiry into the manner or into the right by which it has 
attained them. ,? — Morell, Elements of Psychology, p. 236, note. 
"By dogmatism we understand, in general, both all pro- 
pounding and all receiving of tenets, merely from habit, 
without thought or examination, or, in other words, upon the 
authority of others : in short, the very opposite of critical 
investigation. All assertion for which no proof is ofFered is 
dogmatical." — Chalybieus, SpecuL Philosophy p. 4. 

L 



146 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

DOGM1TISM- 

To maintain that man cannot attain to knowledge of the 
truth, is scepticism. To maintain that he can do so only by 
renouncing his reason, which is naturally defective, and sur- 
rendering himself to an internal inspiration or superior intuition, 
by which he is absorbed into God, and loses all personal 
existence, is mysticism. Dogmatism is to maintain that know- 
ledge may be attained by the right use of our faculties, each 
within its proper sphere, and employed in a right method. 
This is the natural creed of the human race. Scepticism and 
mysticism are after thoughts. 

Dogmatism, or faith in the results of the due exercise of our 
faculties, is to be commended. But dogmatism in the method 
of prosecuting our inquiries is to be condemned. Instead of 
laying down dogmatically truths which are not proven, we 
should proceed rather by observation and doubt. The 
scholastic philosophers did much harm by their dogmatic 
method. It is not to be mistaken for the synthetic method. 
There can be no synthesis without a preceding analysis. But 
they started from positions which had not been proved, and 
deduced consequences which were of no value. — Diet des 
Sciences Philosoph. 

There is wisdom as well as wit in the saying that, Dogmatism 
is Puppyism come to maturity. 
DOUBT {dubito, to go two ways). — Man knows some things 
and is ignorant of many things, while he is in doubt as 
to other things. Doubt is that state of mind in which we 
hesitate as to two contradictory conclusions — having no 
preponderance of evidence in favour of either. Philosophical 
doubt has been distinguished as provisional or definitive. 
Definitive doubt is scepticism. Provisional, or methodical doubt 
is a voluntary suspending of our judgment for a time, in order 
to come to a more clear and sure conclusion. This was first 
given as a rule in philosophical method by Descartes, who tells 
us that he began by doubting everything, discharging his mind 
of all preconceived ideas, and admitting none as clear and true 
till he had subjected them to a rigorous examination. 

" Doubt is some degree of belief, along with the conscious- 
ness of ignorance, in regard to a proposition. Absolute dis- 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 147 

DOUBT— 

belief implies knowledge : it is the knowledge that such or such 
a thing is not true. If the mind admits a proposition without 
any desire for knowledge concerning it, this is credulity. If it 
is open to receive the proposition, but feels ignorance concern- 
ing it, this is doubt. In proportion as knowledge increases, 
doubt diminishes, and belief or disbelief strengthens." — Taylor, 
Elements of Thought— V. Certainty, Scepticism. 
PRE AUf IIYO. — The phenomena of sleep and dreaming, are treated 
by almost all writers on psychology. Dreams very often take 
their rise and character from something in the preceding state 
of body or mind. " Through the multitude of business cometh 
a dream" said Solomon ; and Aristotle regarded dreams as the 
vibrations of our waking feelings. — Ethic., lib. L, cap. 13. 

According to these views, dreams, instead of being prospec- 
tive or prophetic, are retrospective and resultant. The former 
opinion, however, has prevailed in all ages and among all 
nations ; and hence, oneiromancy or prophesying by dreams, 
that is, interpreting them as presages of coming events. 
I>UAIilSUI', DUALITY. — " Pythagoras talked, it is said, of an 
immaterial unity, and a material duality, by which he pre- 
tended to signify, perhaps, the first principles of all things, 
the efficient and material causes." — Bolingbroke, Hum. Reason, 
essay ii. 

Dualism is the doctrine that the universe was created and is 
preserved by the concurrence of two principles, equally neces- 
sary, eternal, and independent. 

Mythological dualism was held by Zoroaster and the Magi, 
who maintained the existence of a good principle and an evil 
principle ; and thus explained the mixed state of things which 
prevails. It would appear, however, according to Zoroaster, 
that both Ormuzd and Ahrimanes were subordinate to 
Akerenes, or the Supreme Deity ; and that it was only a sect 
of the Magi who held the doctrine of dualism in its naked 
form. Their views were revived in the second century by the 
Gnostics, and in the third century were supported by Manes, 
whose followers were called Manieheans. 

Many of the ancient philosophers regarded the universe as 
constituted by two principles, the one active, the other passive, 



148 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

DUAIilS la- 
the one mind, the other matter — the one soul, the other body. 
But the supposition of two infinites, or of two first causes, is 
self- contradictory, and is now abandoned. 

The term dualism also finds a place in the theory of percep- 
tion — q. v. 

DURATION — " After some thought has entirely disappeared 
from the mind it will often return, joined with the belief that 
it has been in the mind before ; this is called memory. Memory 
and the consciousness of succession give us the notion signi- 
fied by the word duration." — Locke, Essay on Hum. Under- 
stand., book ii., chap. 15. 

According to Kant, duration or time, and also space, are 
necessary forms of the human mind, which cannot think of 
bodies but as existing in space, nor of events but as occurring 
in time. — V. Time. 

DCTY. — That which we ought to do — that which we are under 
obligation to do. In seeing a thing to be right, we see at the 
same time that it is our duty to do it. There is a complete 
synthesis between rectitude and obligation. Price has used 
oughtness as synonymous with riglitness. — F. Obligation. 

Duty and right are relative terms. If it be the duty of one 
party to do some thing, it is the right of some other party to 
expect or exact the doing of it. — V. Eight, Eectitude. 
See Wordsworth, Ode to Duty. 

DlTNAlHf SIMT, the doctrine of Leibnitz, that all substance involves 
force. — 7. Matter. 



ECLECTICISM QxKeya, to select, to choose out). — The Alex- 
andrian philosophers, or Neo-Platonicians, who arose at 
Alexandria about the time of Pertinax and Severus, and 
continued to flourish to the end of the reign of Justinian, 
professed to gather and unite into one body, what was true in 
all systems of philosophy. To their method of philosophizing, 
the name eclecticism was first applied. Clemens Alexandrinus 
{Stromm., lib. i., p. 288) said, u By philosophy I mean neither 
the Stoic, nor the Platonic, nor the Epicurean, nor the Aristo- 
telian ; but whatever things have been properly said by each 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 149 

ECLECTICISM!— 

of these sects, inculcating justice and devout knowledge, — this 
whole selecti i / cc U . ' sophy" Diogenes Laertes tells us (1. 
sect. 21), that Potamos of Alexandria introduced sKXixny.r/j 
wLfsmiw. But the method had been adopted by Plato and 
Aristotle before, and has been followed by many in all ages of 
phi: jsof by. Leibnitz said that truth was more widely diffused 
than was commonly thought; but it was often burdened and 
weakened, mutilated and corrupted by additions which spoiled 
it and made it less useful. In the philosophy of the ancients, 
or those who had gone before, he thought there was pcrennis 

uld only be disintricated from 
error and disinterred from the rubbish which overwhelmed it. 
In modern times the great advocate of eclecticism is Mons. 
Cousin. But its legitimacy as a mode of philosophizing has 
been challen. e 

••The sense in which this term is used by Clemens" (of 
Alexandria) says Mr. Maurice (Mor. and Metaphys. Phil., p. 
"is obvious enough. He did not care for Plato, Aris- 
totle, Pythagoras, as such : far less did he care for the opinions 
and contlicts of the schools which bore their names ; he found 
in each hints of precious truths of which he desired to avail 
himself: he would gather the flowers without asking in what 
m they grew, the prickles he would leave for those who 
had a faro m. Eclecticism, in this sense, seemed only 

like another name for catholic wisdom. A man, conscious that 
everything in nature and in art was given for his learning, had 
a right to suck honey wherever it was to be 'found: he would 
find sweetness in it if it was hanging wild on trees and shrubs, 
he could admire the elaborate architecture of the cells in which 
it was stored The Author of all good to man had scattered 
the gifts, had imparted the skill: to receive them thankfully 
was an act of homage to Him. But once lose the feeling of 
and gratitude, which belonged so remarkably to 
Clemens — once let it be fancied that the philosopher was not a 
mere receiver of treasures which had been provided for him, 
but an ingenious chemist and compounder oIl various naturally 
unsociable ingredients, and the eclectical doctrine would lead 
to more self-conceit, would be more unreal and heartless 



150 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

ECLECTICISM— 

than any one of the sectarian elements out of which it was 
fashioned. It would want the belief and conviction which 
dwell, with whatever unsuitable companions, even in the 
narrowest theory. Many of the most vital characteristics 
of the original dogmas would be effaced under pretence of 
taking off their rough edges and fitting them into each other. 
In general the superficialities and formality of each creed 
would be preserved in the new system ; its original and essen- 
tial characteristics sacrificed." 

u In philosophy Cicero was never more than an eclectic, that 
is, in point of fact, no philosopher at all. For the very essence 
of the philosophical mind lies in this, that it is constrained by an 
irresistible impulse to ascend to primary, necessary principles, 
and cannot halt until it reaches the living, streaming sources of 
truth ; whereas the eclectic will stop short where he likes, at 
any maxim to which he chooses to ascribe the authority of a 
principle. The philosophical mind must be systematic, ever 
seeking to behold all things in their connection, as parts or 
members of a great organic whole, and impregnating them all 
with the electric spirit of order ; while the eclectic is content if 
he can string together a number of generalizations. A philo- 
sopher incorporates and animates ; an eclectic heaps and ties 
up. The philosopher combines multiplicity into unity; the 
eclectic leaves unity straggling about in multiplicity. The 
former opens the arteries of truth, the latter its veins. Cicero's 
legal habits peer out from under his philosophical cloak, in 
his constant appeal to precedent, his ready deference to autho- 
rity. For in law, as in other things, the practitioner does not 
go beyond maxims, that is, secondary or tertiary principles, 
taking his stand upon the mounds which his predecessors have 
erected." — Second Series of Guesses at Truth, edition 1848, p. 
238. 

See Cousin, Fragmens Pliilosophiques, 8vo, Paris, 1826; 
Joufiroy, Melanges Pliilosopliiques, 8vo, Paris, 1833 ; Damiron, 
Essai sur VHistoire de la Philosopliie au dixneuvieme siecle, 
2 torn., 8vo, Paris, 1834. 

ECONOMICS (olnog, a house ; vopog, a law). — Treatises under 
this title were written by Xenophon, Aristotle, and Cicero. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 151 

ECONOMICS— 

They seem to have treated of the best means of managing and 
increasing the comforts and resources of a household. Only 
fragments of them remain. But in modern times justice or 
social duty has been distinguished by Henry More into ethical, 
economical, and political. And economics has been employed 
to denote those duties which spring from the relations which 
exist in a family or household. These are the duties — 

1. Of husband and wife. 

2. Of parent and child. 

3. Of master and servant. 

ECSTASY (twroiGts, standing out), a transport of the soul by 
which it seems as if out of the body. 

" Whether that which we call ecstasy be not dreaming with 
the eyes open, I leave to be examined." — Locke, Essay on 
Hum. Understand., book ii., chap. 19. 

This word does not occur in philosophy before the time of 
Fhilo and the Alexandrians. Plotinus and Porphyry pretended 
to have ecstasies in which they were united to God. Among 
Christian writers, Bonaventura {Itiner avium Mentis in Deum), 
Gerson {TJieologia Mysticd), and Francis de Sales, recom- 
mend those contemplations which may lead to ecstasy. But 
there is danger of their leading to delusion, and to confound 
the visions of a heated imagination with higher and nearer 
views of spiritual things. 

Baader, Traite sur VExtase, 1817. 

EDUCATION (educo, to lead out), means the development of 
the bodily and mental powers. The human being is born and 
lives amidst scenes and circumstances which have a tendency to 
call forth and strengthen his powers of body and mind. And 
this may be called the education of nature. But by education 
is generally meant the using those means of development which 
one man or one generation of men may employ in favour of 
another. These means are chiefly instruction, or the commu- 
nication of knowledge to enlighten and strengthen the mind ; 
and discipline, or the formation of manners and habits. In- 
struction and discipline may be physical or moral, that is, may 
refer to the body or to the mind. Both, when employed in all 
their extent, go to make up education, which is the aid given 



152 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

EDUCATION— 

to assist the development, and advance the progress of the 
human being, as an individual, and as a member of a family, of 
a community, and a race. 

" The business of education is to educe or bring out that 
which is within, not merely or mainly to instruct or impose a 
form from without. Only we are not framed to be self-suffi- 
cient, but to derive our nourishment, intellectual and spiritual, 
as well as bodily, from without, through the ministration of 
others ; and hence instruction must ever be a chief element of 
education. Hence too we obtain a criterion to determine what 
sort of instruction is right and beneficial — that which ministers 
to education, which tends to bring out, to nourish and cultivate 
the faculties of the mind, not that which merely piles a mass of 
information upon them. Moreover, since nature, if left to her- 
self, is ever prone to run wild, and since there are hurtful and 
pernicious elements around us, as well as nourishing and salu- 
tary, pruning and sheltering, correcting and protecting are also 
among the principal offices of education" — Second Series, 
Guesses at Truth, 1848, p. 145. 

Milton, On Education; Locke, On Education ; Guizot, Medi- 
tations, 8vo, Paris, 1852 ; Conseils aVun Pere sur VEducation. 

EFFECT. — That which is produced by the operation of a cause. — 
V. Cause. 

EGO (l). — " Supposing it proved that my thoughts and my con- 
sciousness must have a subject, and consequently that I exist, 
how do I know that all that train and succession of thoughts 
which I remember belong to one subject, and that the I of this 
moment is the very individual / of yesterday, and of time past?" 
— Reid, Inquiry, Introd., sect. 3. 

Sir William Hamilton's note upon this passage is as follows : 
— u In English, we cannot say the I and the not I, so happily 
as the French le moi and le non-moi, or even the German das 
Icli and das nicht Ich. The ambiguity arising from identity of 
sound between the / and the eye, would itself preclude the 
ordinary employment of the former. The ego and the non-ego 
are the best terms we can use ; and as the expressions are 
scientific, it is perhaps no loss that their technical precision is 
guarded by their non-vernacularity" 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 153 

EGO— 

In another note (ReicTs Works, note b, sect. 1, p. 806) he has 
added: — "The ego as the subject of thought and knowledge, is 
now commonly styled by philosophers the subject; and subjective 
is a familiar expression for what pertains to the mind or thinking 
principle. In contrast and correlation to these, the terms object 
and objective are, in like manner, now in general use to denote 
the non-ego, its affections and properties, and in general, the 
really existent as opposed to the ideally known*" 
EGOIS3I, JEGOIST. — " Those Cartesians who in the progress of 
their doubts ended in absolute egoism." 

" A few bold thinkers, distinguished by the name of egoists, 
had pushed then' scepticism to such a length as to doubt of 
everything but their own existence. According to these, the 
proposition, Cogito ergo sum, is the only truth which can be re- 
garded as absolutely certain." — Stewart, Dissert., part ii., p. 
161, and p. 175. 

Dr. Eeid says (Intell. Poiv., essay ii., chap. 8) , that some of 
Descartes' disciples who doubted of everything but their own 
existence, and the existence of the operations and ideas of their 
own mind, remained at this stage of his system and got the 
name of egoists. But Sir William Hamilton, in a note on the 
passage, says, " He is doubtful about the existence of this sup- 
posed sect of egoists.'* 

The first sense and aspect of egoism may seem to be selfish- 
ness. But this is contradicted by the following epitaph : — 

In the churchyard of Homersfield (St. Mary, Southehnham), 
Sufolk, was the gravestone of Robert Cry toft, who died Nov. 
17, 1810, aged ninety, bearing the following epitaph: — 

" MYSELF. 
" As I walk'd by myself, I talk'd to myself, 
And thus myself said to me, 
Look to thyself, and take care of thyself, 
For nobody cares for thee. 

"So I turned to myself and I answered myself, 

In the self-same reverie, 
Look to myself, or look not to myself, 
The self-same thing wfll it be." 

EL.ECTJ01V (cligo, to choose), is an elicit act of will, by which, 
after deliberation of several means to an end proposed by the 



154 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

EJECTION— 

understanding, the will elects one rather than any other. 
Volition has reference to the end, election is of the means. 
According to others, no distinction should be taken between 
election and volition; as to will an end is the same act as to 
choose the means. But an end may be accomplished by differ- 
ent means — of one or other of which there is election. 

Aristotle (Ethics, book iii., chap. 3, 4) says, " moral prefer- 
ence, npoatpsGtg, then, relates to those things only which may 
be accomplished by our own exertions ; it is appetite or affec- 
tion, combined with and modified by reason ; and conversant 
not about ends, but about the best means by which they may 
be attained. Volition, on the contrary, is conversant only about 
ends; which consist, according to some, in real, and according 
to others, in seeming good. 

ELEMENT (yrot^ov). — The Stoic definition of an element is, 
"that out of which, as their first principle, things generated are 
made, and into which, as their last remains, they are resolved.' ' 
— Diog. Laert., vii., 176. 

" We call that elementary which in a composition cannot be 
divided into heterogeneous parts — thus the elements of sound 
constitute sound, and the last parts into which you divide it — 
parts which you cannot divide into other sounds of a dif- 
ferent kind. The last parts into which bodies can be divided — 
parts which cannot be divided into parts of a different kind, 
are the elements of bodies. The elements of every being are its 
constitutive principle." — Arist., Metapliys.^ lib. iv., c. 3. 

" Elements are rot kvw7cos.(yxfivT» uinu — the inherent or in- 
existing causes, such as matter and form. There are other 
causes, such as the tribe of efficient causes, which cannot be 
called elements, because they make no part of the sibstances 
which they generate or produce. Thus the statuary is no part 
of his statue; the painter of his picture. Hence it appears 
that all elements are causes, but not all causes elenents." — 
Harris, Philosoph. Arrang., chap. 5, note. And in the chap, 
he says, " In form and matter we place the elements of natural 
substance." 

Materia prima, or matter without form — 2 Kyi, was an element 
ready to receive form. This seems to be the use of the word 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 155 

EEEUIENT— 

as retained in the communion service. Bread and wine are 
elements ready to receive the form of the body and blood of 
Christ. "Like the elements of the material world, the bases 
of the sacred natures into which they were transformed.' ' — 
Hampden, On Scholastic Philosophy, lect. vii. — See Doublado's 
Letters. 

"The elementes be those originall thynges unmyxt and un- 
compounde, of whose temperance and myxture all other 
thynges having corporal substance be compact; of them be 
foure, that is to say, earth, water, ayre, and fyre." — Sir T. 
Elyot, Castel of Health, b. i. 

Element is applied analogically to many things ; as to letters, 
the elements of words; to words the elements of speech; and in 
general to the principles or first truths or rules of any science 
or art. 

EEEUIENTOIiOOY V. METHODOLOGY. 

ELICIT (elicio, to draw out), is applied to acts of will which are 
produced directly by the will itself, and are contained within 
it; as velle aut nolle. An elicit act of will is either election or 
volition — the latter having reference to ends, and the former to 
means. 

ELIMINATION (elimino, to throw out), in Mathematics, is the 
process of causing a function to disappear from an equation, 
the solution of which would be embarrassed by its presence 
there. In other writings the correct signification is, "the ex- 
trusion of that which is superfluous or irrelevant." Thus, in 
Edin.Rev., April, 1833, Sir W. Hamilton says:— "The pre- 
paratory step of the discussion was, therefore, an elimination of 
those less precise and appropriate significations, which, as they 
would at best only afford a remote genus and difference, were 
wholly incompetent for the purpose of a definition." 

It is frequently used in the sense of eliciting, but incor- 
rectly. 

EMANATION (emano, to flow from). — According to several 
systems of philosophy and religion which have prevailed in the 
East, all the beings of which the universe is composed, whether 
body or spirit, have proceeded from, and are parts of, the 
Divine Bein£ or substance. This doctrine of emanation is 



106 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

EMANATION— 

to be found in the systems of Zoroaster, the Gnostics, and 
Neo-Platonicians. It differs little, if at all, from Pantheism. 

EMINENTLY.— V. VIRTUAL. 

EMOTION (emoveo, to move out), is often used as synonymous 
with feeling. Strictly taken, it means " a state of feeling which, 
while it does not spring directly from an affection of body, 
manifests its existence and character by some sensible effect 
upon the body." 

An emotion differs from a sensation, by its not originating in 
a state of body ; and from a cognition, by its being pleasurable 
or painful. 

Emotions, like other states of feeling, imply knowledge. 
Something beautiful or deformed, sublime or ridiculous, is 
known and contemplated ; and on the contemplation, springs 
up the appropriate feeling, followed by the characteristic ex- 
pression of countenance, or attitude, or manner. 

In themselves considered, emotions * can scarcely be called 
springs of action. They tend rather, while they last, to fix 
attention on the objects or occurrences which have excited 
them. In many instances, however, emotions are succeeded by 
desires to obtain possession of the objects which awaken them, 
or to remove ourselves from the presence of such objects. 
When an emotion is thus succeeded by some degree of desire, 
it forms, according to Lord Karnes, a passion, and becomes, 
according to its nature, a powerful and permanent spring of 
action. 

Emotions, then, are awakened through the medium of the 
intellect, and are varied and modified by the conception we 
form of the objects to which they refer. 

Emotions manifest their existence and character by sensible 
effects upon the body. 

Emotions, in themselves, and by themselves, lead to quies- 
cence and contemplation, rather than activity. Bit they com- 
bine with springs of action, and give to them a character and 

* "The feelings of beauty, grandeur, and whatever else is comprehended under the 
name of taste, do not lead to action, hut terminate in delightful contemplation, which 
constitutes the essential distinction between them and the moral S3ntiments, to which, 
in some points of view, they may doubtless be likened. "—Mackintosh, Dissert., p. 238. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 157 

EMOTION— 

a colouring. What is said to be done from surprise or shame, 
has its proper spring — the surprise or shame being concomit- 
ant. — See Dr. Chalmers, Sketches of Ment. and Mor. Phil., 
p. 88. 
EMPIRIC, EMPIRICISM. — Among the Greek physicians those 
who founded their practice on experience called themselves 
empirics (eftTet(>tzot)] those who relied on theory, methodists 
({tzQohiKoi)', and those who held a middle course, dogmatists 
(loy t uotrtxot). The term empiricism became naturalized in 
England when the writings of Galen and other opponents of 
the empirics were in repute, and hence it was applied generally 
to any ignorant pretender to knowledge. It is now used to 
denote that kind of knowledge which is the result of experi- 
ence. Aristotle applies the terms historical and empirical in 
the same sense. Historical knowledge is the knowledge that a 
thing is.^ Philosophical knowledge is the knowledge of its 
cause, or why it is. The Germans laugh at our phrase philo- 
sophical transactions, and say, "Socrates brought down philo- 
sophy from the clouds — but the English have brought her down 
to the dunghill." 

Empiricism allows nothing to be true nor certain but what is 
given by experience, and rejects all knowledge a priori. 

In antiquity the Ionian school may be said to have been 
sensualist or empirical. The saying of Heraclitus that nothing 
is, but that all things are beginning to be, or are in a continual 
flux, amounts to a denial of the persistence of substance. De- 
mocritus and the atomists, if they admitted the substance of 
atoms, denied the fundamental laws of the human mind. And 
the teaching of Protagoras, that sense is knowledge, and man 
the measure of all tilings, made all science individual and rela- 
tive. The influence of Plato and Aristotle re-established the 
foundation of true philosophy, and empiricism was regarded as 
scepticism. 

In the middle ages empiricism was found only among the 
physicians and alchemists, and was not the badge of any school 
of philosophy. 

Empiricism, as applied to the philosophy of Locke, means 
that he traces all knowledge to experience, sfcrstoix. Expe- 



158 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

EMPIRIC— 

rience, according to him, included sensation and reflection. 
The French philosophers, Condillac and others, rejected re- 
flection as a distinct source of knowledge ; and their doctrine, 
to distinguish it from that of Locke, is called sensualism. 
Ideology gives nothing to the mind but sensations remembered 
or generalized, which it calls ideas. But Reid and the common 
sense philosophers, as well as Cousin and the rationalist 
philosophers, hold that the mind has primary beliefs, or 
universal and necessary ideas, which are the ground of all 
experience and knowledge. — V. Experience. 

Empirical or experimental u \s an epithet used by Madame 
de Stael and other writers on German philosophy, to distin- 
guish what they call the philosophy of sensation, from that of 
Plato and of Leibnitz. It is, accordingly, generally, if not 
always, employed by them in an unfavourable sense. In this 
country, on the contrary, the experimental or inductive philo- 
sophy of the human mind denotes those speculations concerning 
mind, which, rejecting all hypothetical theories, rest solely on 
phenomena for which we have the evidence of consciousness. 
It is applied to the philosophy of Reid, and to all that is truly 
valuable in the metaphysical works of Descartes, Locke, 
Berkeley, and Hume." — Stewart, Dissert., pt. ii., p. 146, note. 

EMULATION (czmulus, striving; from clptKha,, a strife), is the 
desire of superiority. It is one of those primitive desires 
which manifest themselves in very early years. It prompts, 
when properly directed and regulated, to the most strenuous 
and persevering exertion. Its influence in the carrying for- 
ward of education is most important. 

ENI>S. — Ends are of two kinds, according to Aristotle (Eth., lib. 
i., cap. 1), s'Apyeiou, operations ; t^ycc, productions. An 
kusQysioi is the end, when the object of a man's acting is the 
pleasure or advantage in being so employed, as in music, 
dancing, contemplation, &c, which produce nothing, generally 
speaking, beyond the pleasure which the act affords. An 
egyou is something which is produced beyond the operation 
or energy; thus, the shoe is the t^you produced by the 
evegyeia of shoe-making. — Paul, Analysis of Arist., p. 2. 
This corresponds to Adam Smith's distinction of labour as 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 159 

ENDS- 

productive or unproductive, according as it gives or does not 
give a material product. 

An end is that for the sake of which an action is done. 
Hence it has been said to be, principium in intentione et ter- 
minus in executione. 

When one end has been gained, it may be the means of 
gaining some other end. Hence it is that ends have been 
distinguished, as supreme and ultimate, or subordinate and 
intermediate. That which is sought for its own sake, is the 
supreme and ultimate end of those actions which are done with 
a view to it. That which is sought for the sake of some other 
end, is a subordinate and intermediate end. 

Ends as ultimate, are distinguished into the end simpliciter 
ultimus, and ends which are ultimate secundum quid. An end 
which is the last that is successively aimed at, in a series of 
actions, is called ultimate secundum quid. But that which is 
aimed at, exclusively for its own sake, and is never regarded 
as a means to any other end, is an ultimate end, simply and 
absolutely. 

See Edwards, Dissertation concerning the End for which God 
created the World; Cicero, De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum. 
ElVs is either ens reale or ens rationis. 

Ens Rationis. — That which has no existence but in the idea 

which the mind forms of it ; as a golden mountain. 
Ens Reale, in philosophical language, is taken late et stride, and 
is distinguished as ens potentiate, or that which may exist, and 
ens actuate, or that which does exist. It is sometimes taken 
as the concrete of essentia, and signifies what has essence and 
may exist — as a rose in winter. Sometimes as the participle 
of esse, and then it signifies what actually exists. Ens without 
intellect is res, a thing. 
ENTELECHY (gz/rgA^s/a, from hn'kkq, perfect ; i^g/j/, to have ; 
and T&og, an end ; in Latin perfectihabid). — " In one of the 
books of the Pythagoreans, viz., Ocellus Lucanus, Uegl tov 
ttolutos, the word ovuTihsioe, is used in the same sense. Hence 
it has been thought that this was borrowed from the Pytha- 
goreans." — Monboddo, Ancient Metaphys., b. i., ch. 3, p. 16, 
note. 



160 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

SNTELECHY- 

Cicero (Tuscul. Qucest., lib. i., qusest. 1) interprets it to 
mean quandam quasi continuatam motionem et perennem. 

Melancthon (Opera, torn, xiii., pp. 12-14, edit. 1846) gives 
two interpretations of Endelechy, as he writes it. He says 
that kvhzhvxfcg signifies continuus, and gz/BgAg^g/^ continuitas. 
According to him, Aristotle used it as synonymous with bA^yuot. 
Hence Cicero translated it by continuous movement or agi- 
tation. Argyropolus blames Cicero for this, and explains it 
as meaning " interior perfection," as if it were to htig rehetovif. 
But Melancthon thinks Cicero's explanation in accordance 
with the philosophy of Aristotle. 

According to others, kvhshkxua means continuance, and is 
a totally different word from evTeXe%eiei, which means actu- 
ality. Arist. Meta.ph.ys., Bohn's Libr., pp. 68, 301 ; Donald- 
son, New Cratylus, pp. 339-344. 

According to Leibnitz, entelecJieia is derived apparently from 
the Greek word which signifies perfect, and therefore the cele- 
brated Hermolaus Barbaras expressed it in Latin, word for 
word, by perfectihabia, for act is the accomplishment of power ; 
and he needed not to have consulted the devil, as he did, they 
say, to tell him this much. — Leibnitz, Theodicee, partie i., 
sect. 87. 

" You may give the name of entelechies to all simple 
substances or created monads, for they have in them a 
certain perfection (lyjvai to gWgAgV), they have a sufficiency 
(xvTapxstK) which makes them the source of their internal 
actions, and so to say incorporeal automatons." — Monadologie, 
sect. 18. He calls a monad an autarchic automaton, or first 
entelechie — having life and force in itself. 

u Entelecliy is the opposite to potentiality, yet would be ill 
translated by that which we often oppose to potentiality, 
actuality. JZloog expresses the substance of each thing viewed 
in repose — its form cr constitution; sApysi» its substance, 
considered as active and generative ; hre?i£%sta seems to be 
the synthesis or harmony of these two ideas. The effectio of 
Cicero, therefore, represents the most important side of it, but 
not the whole." — Maurice, Mor. and Metaphys. Phil., note, 
p. 191. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 161 

JENTEIiECHTi:— 

'E>T£Ag^g/3t ce qui a en soi sa fin, qui par consequent ne 
releve que de soi nierne, et constitue une unite indivisible. 
— Cousin, note to Transl. of Aristotle's Metaphysics, book 
xii., p. 212. 

" LEntelechie est oppose a la simple puissance, coninie la 
forme a la inatiere, l'etre au possible. C'est elle qui, par la 
vertu de la fin, constitue l'essence meme des choses, et ini- 
prime le mouvement a la matiere aveugle ; et c'est en ce 
sens qu' Aristote a pu donner de Tame cette celebre defini- 
tion, qu'elle est l'entelecliie ou forme premiere de tout corps 
naturel qui possede la vie en puissance." — Diet, des Sciences 
Philosopli. 

Aristotle defines the soul of man to be an entelechy; a 
definition of which Dr. Reid said he could make no sense. — 
V. Soul, Actual. 
EIVTMUSIASJI (o 0sos If afcrff) — " is almost a synonym of genius; 
the moral life in the intellectual light, the will in the reason : 
and without it, says Seneca, nothing truly great was ever 
achieved." — Coleridge, Notes on Eng. Div.. vol. i., p. 338. 

The word occurs both in Plato and Aristotle. According 
to its composition it shoidd signify ;t divine inspiration." But 
it is applied in general to any extraordinary excitement or 
exaltation of mind. The raptures of the poet, the deep medi- 
tations of the philosopher, the heroism of the warrior, the 
devotedness of the martyr, and the ardour of the patriot, 
are so many different phases of enthusiasm. " According to 
Plutarch, there be five kinds of Enthusiasm: — Divinatory. 
Bacchical (or coryb antic al), Poetical (imder which he com- 
prehends musical also). Martial and Erotica!, or Amatoric." 
A Treatise concerning Enthusiasm by Meric Casaubon, D.D.. 
chap. 1. Shaftesbury, Of Enthusiasm. See also Natural Hist, 
of Enthusiasm, by Isaac Taylor: Madame de Stael, Germany ; 
Locke, Essay on Hum. Understand., book iv., chap. 19 ; More. 
Enthusiasm us Triumph atus. 
ETVTEttTI?lE~TIE (k* Ovfta, in the mind), is an irregular syllogism 
in which one of the premisses is not expressed, but kept in 
mind; as "every animal is a substa nee, therefore, every man is 
a substance; 1 ' in which the premiss, u man is an animal," Ls 

M 



162 VOCABTJLAKY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

ENTBTriflEME— 

suppressed. M This is the vulgar opinion regarding Aristotle's 
Enthymeme, but, as I have shown, not the correct." — See 
Edin. Rev., vol. lvii., p. 221 ; Sir William Hamilton, Reidh 
Works, p. 704, note. Aristotle's Syllogism was an inference 
in matter necessary; his Enthymeme was an inference ht matter 
probable. — Bachmann, p. 260. The famous expression of Des- 
cartes, Cogito ergo sum, is, as to form, an enthymeme. It was 
not put, however, as a proof of existence, but as meaning that 
the fact of existing is enclosed in the consciousness of thinking. 
ENTITY (entitas), in the scholastic philosophy was synonymous 
with essence or form. 

To all individuals of a species there is something in common 
— a nature which transiently invests all, but belongs exclu- 
sively to none. This essence, taken by itself and viewed apart 
from any individual, was what the scholastics called an entity. 
Animals had their entity, which was called animality. Men had 
their entity, which was called humanity. It denoted the common 
nature of the individuals of a species or genus. It was the 
idea or model according to which we conceived of them. The 
question whether there was a reality corresponding to this 
idea, divided philosophers into Nominalists and Realists — q. v. 

It is used to denote anything that exists, as an object of 
sense or of thought. — V. Ens. 
ENUNCIATION, in Logic, includes the doctrine of propositions — 

q. v. 
EPICHEIBEMA (gsr/p^sa, to put one's hand to a thing), an 
attempted proof — is a syllogism having the major or minor 
premiss, or both, confirmed by an incidental proposition called 
a Prosyllogism. This proposition, with the premiss it is at- 
tached to, forms an enthymeme. The incidental proposition is 
the expressed premiss of the enthymeme, and the premiss it is 
attached to is the conclusion : e. g., — 

All sin is dangerous. 

Covetousness is sin (for it is a transgression of the law), 
therefore, 

It is dangerous. 

The minor premiss is an enthymeme. " Covetousness is a 
transgression of the law ; therefore, it is sin. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 163 

EPICURE AN. — A follower of Epicurus, a philosopher, who was 
born 341, b. c. 

" The system of Epicurus agreed with those of Plato, Aris- 
totle, and Zeno, in making virtue consist in acting in the most 
suitable manner to obtain primary objects of natural desire. 
It differed from all of them in two other respects; — 1st, in the 
account which it gave of these primary objects of natural 
desire ; and, 2dly, in the account which it gave of the excel- 
lence of virtue, or the reason why that quality ought to be 
esteemed." — Smith, Theory of Mor. Sent, part vii., sect. 2. 

See Gassendi, Be Vita Moribus et Doctrina, Epicuri, 4to, 
Lyons, 1647. 

EPlSTElMEOliOCJY (Koyog rfc ew wry pins, the science of true 
knowing) — u the doctrine or theory of knowing, just as Ontology 
is the'doctrine or theory of being." — Ferrier, Inst, of Metaphys., 
p. 46. 

EPlSYliliOGTSUI. — In a chain of reasoning one of the premisses 
of the main argument may be the conclusion of another argu- 
ment, in that case called a Prosyllogism ; or the conclusion of 
the main argument may be a premiss to a supplementary one, 
which is called an episyllogism. The question is, u Has A. B. 
been poisoned?" and the syllogism is, " A man who has taken 
a large quantity of arsenic has been poisoned, and A. B. is 
found to have done so, therefore, he has been poisoned.' ' 
With the addition of a prosyllogism and an episyllogism the 
meaning would run — " A man who has taken arsenic has been 
poisoned; and A. B. has taken arsenic, for tests discover it 
(Prosyl.), therefore, A. B. has been poisoned, and, therefore, 
there cannot be a verdict of death from natural causes (Episyll.)" 

equanimity.- V. Magnanimity. 

EQUITY (Iviuxtta, or to fffov, as distinguished from to voptx.6v), 
is described by Aristotle (Ethics, book v., chap. 10), as that 
kind of justice which corrects the irregularities or rigours of 
strict legal justice. All written laws must necessarily speak in 
general terms, and must leave particular cases to the discretion 
of the parties. An equitable man will not press the letter of 
the law in his own favour, when, by doing so, he may do in- 
justice to his neighbour. The ancients, in measuring rusticated 
building, in which the stones alternately projected and receded, 



164 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

EQUITY— 

used a leaden rule. Equity, like this leaden rule, bends to the 
specialities of every case, when the iron rule of legal justice 
cannot do so. 

" Equity contemplates the mass of rights growing out of the 
law of nature; and justice contemplates the mass of rights 
growing out of the law of society. Equity treats of our dues 
as equals; justice treats of our dues as fellow- subjects. The 
purpose of equity is respect for humanity; the purpose of 
justice is respect for property. Equity withstands oppres- 
sion ; justice withstands injury." — Taylor, Synonyms. — V. 
Justice. 

" In the most general sense we are accustomed to call that 
equity which, in human transactions, is founded in natural 
justice, in honesty and right, and which properly arises ex cequo 
et bono. In this sense it answers precisely to the definition 
of justice or natural law, as given by Justinian in his Pan- 
dects, '•Justitia est constans et perpetua voluntas jus suum cuique 
tribuendi. 1 And the word jus is used in the same sense in the 
Roman law, when it is declared that jus est ars boni et cequi, 
where it means that we are accustomed to call jurisprudence." 
This is natural jurisprudence. In this sense equity is co- 
incident with it. But Wolfius says, u Justum appellaiur quicquid 
Jit secundum jus perfectum alterius; cequum vero quod se- 
cundum imperfectum" — Story, Comment, on Equity Jurisp., pp. 
1-3. 
EQUIVOCAL or HOMONYMOUS words have different signifi- 
cations, as bull, the animal, the Pope's letter, a blunder. 
Gallus, in Latin, a cock, or a Frenchman. Canis, a dog, or 
the dog-star. They originate in the multiplicity of things and 
the poverty of language. 

Words signifying different things may be used, — 

First, By accident ; or, second, With intention. 1st, It has 
happened, that Sandwich is the name of a peer — of a town — of 
a cluster of Islands, and of a slice of bread and meat. 2d, 
There are four ways in which a word may come to be used 
equivocally with knowledge or intention : — 

1. On account of the resemblance of the things signified, as 
when a statue or a picture is called a man. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 165 

EQT7IVOCAX— 

2. On account of proportion, as when a point is called a 
principle in respect to a line, and unity a principle in respect to 
number. 

3. On account of common derivation — thus, a medical man, 
a medical book, a medical instrument, are all derived from 
medicine. 

4. On account of common reduction or reference — thus, a 
healthful medicine, healthful pulse, healthful herb, all referring 
to human health. 

Some of these are intermediate between equivocal and 
analogous terms, particularly Xo. 4. 

An Equivocal noun, in Logic, has more than one signifi- 
cation, each of its significations being equally applicable to 
several objects, as pen, post. u Strictly speaking, there is 
hardly a word in any language which may not be regarded as 
in this sense equivocal; but the title is usually applied only in 
any case when a word is employed equivocally ; e. g., when the 
middle term is used in different senses in the two premises, or 
where a proposition is liable to be understood in different 
senses, according to the various meaning of one of its terms." 
"Whately, Log., b. iii., § 10. 
EQLI VOCATION (ceque, voco, to use one word in different 
senses). — " How absolute the knave is ! We must speak by 
the card, or equivocation will undo us." — Hamlet, act v., 
scene 1. 

In morals, to equivocate is to offend against the truth by 
using language of double meaning, in one sense, with the 
intention of its being understood in another — or in either 
sense according to circumstances. The ancient oracles gave 
responses of ambiguous meaning. Aio, te, ^Eacide, Romanos 
vincere posse — may mean either ; u I say that thou, O descend- 
ant of ^Eacus, canst conquer the Romans;" or, " I say that 
the Romans can conquer thee, O descendant of JEacus."' 
Latronem Petrum occidisse, may mean, " a robber slew Peter ;" 
or, " Peter slew a robber. " 

Edwardum occidere nolite timere oonum est. The message 
penned by Adam Orleton, Bishop of Hereford, and sent by 
Q. Isabella to the gaolers of her husband, Edw. II. Being 



166 VOCABULAKY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

EQUIVOCATION— 

written without punctuation, the words might be read two 
ways ; with a comma after timere, they would mean, " Edward, 
to kill fear not, the deed is good ; " but with it after nolite, 
the meaning would be, " Edward kill not, to fear the deed is 
good." 

Henry Garnet, who was tried for his participation in the 
Gunpowder Plot, thus expressed himself in a paper dated 
20th March, 1605-6 : — " Concerning equivocation, this is my 
opinion ; in moral affairs, and in the common intercourse of 
life, when the truth is asked among friends, it is not lawful to 
use equivocation, for that would cause great mischief in society 
— wherefore, in such cases, there is no place for equivocation. 
But in cases where it becomes necessary to an individual for 
his defence, or for avoiding any injustice or loss, or for obtain- 
ing any important advantage, without danger or mischief to 
any other person, then equivocation is lawful." — Jardine, Gun- 
powder Plot, p. 233. 

Dr. Johnson would not allow his servant to say he was not 
at home when he really was. u A servant's strict regard for 
truth," said he, u must be weakened by such a practice. A 
philosopher may know that it is merely a form of denial, but 
few servants are such nice distinguishers. If I accustom a 
servant to tell a lie for me, have I not reason to apprehend 
that he will tell many lies for himself?" — Boswell, Letters, 
p. 32. 

There may be equivocation in sound as well as in sense. 
It is told that the queen of George III. asked one of the 
dignitaries of the church, if ladies might knot on Sunday? 
His reply was, Ladies may not ; which, in so far as sound goes, 
is equivocal. — V. Beservation. 
ERROR. — Knowledge being to be had only of visible certain 
truth, error is not a fault of our knowledge, but a mistake 
of our judgment, giving assent to that which is not true. — 
Locke, Essay on Hum. Understand., b. iv., c. 20. 

" The true," said Bossuet, after Augustine, " is that which 
is, the false is that which is not." To err is to fail of attaining 
to the true, which we do when we think that to be which is 
not — or think that not to be which is. Error is not in things 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 167 

ERROR— 

themselves, but in the mind of him who errs, or judges not 
according to the truth. 

Our faculties, when employed within their proper sphere, 
are fitted to give us the knowledge of truth. We err by a 
wrong use of them. The causes of error are partly in the 
objects of knowledge, and partly in ourselves. As it is only 
the true and real which exists, it is only the true and real 
which can reveal itself. But it may not reveal itself fully — 
and man, mistaking a part for the whole, or partial evidence 
for complete evidence, falls into error. Hence it is, that in 
all error there is some truth. To discover the relation which 
this partial truth bears to the whole truth, is to discover the 
origin of the error. 

The causes in ourselves which lead to error, arise from 
wrong views of our faculties, and of the conditions under 
which they operate. Indolence, precipitation, passion, custom, 
authority, and education, may also contribute to lead us into 
error. — V. Falsity. 

Bacon, Novum Organum, lib. i. ; Malebranche, Recherche de 
la Verite; Descartes, On Method; Locke, Essay on Hum. 
Understand., b. vi., c. 20. 
ESOTERIC and EXOTERIC (eaufe*, within; gg» 9 without). 
— "The philosophy of the Pythagoreans, like that of the 
other sects, was divided into the exoteric and the esoteric; 
the open, taught to all: and the secret, taught to a select 
number." — TTarburton, Div. Leg., book ii., note bb. 

According to Origen, Aulas Genius, Porphyry, and Jam- 
blichus, the distinction of esoteric and exoteric among the 
Pythagoreans was applied to the disciples — according to 
the degree of initiation to which they had attained, being 
fully admitted into the society, or being merely postulants. 
— Bitter, Hist, de Philosophic, torn, i., p. 298, of French 
translation. 

Plato is said to have had doctrines which he taught 
publicly to all— and other doctrines which he taught only 
to a few, in secret. There is no allusion to such a distinc- 
tion of doctrines in the writings of Plato. Aristotle (Phys., 
lib. iv., c. 2), speaks of opinions of Plato which were not 



168 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

ESOTERIC— 

written. But it does not follow that these were secret — 'E* 
roig Keyo t uivot$ dypaQotg loypotatv. They may have been 
oral. 

Aristotle himself frequently speaks of some of his writings 
as exoteric ; and others as acroamatic, or esoteric. The former 
treat of the same subjects as the latter, but in a popular and 
elementary way ; while the esoteric are more scientific in their 
form and matter. 

Ravaisson, Essai sur la Metaphysique oVAristote, torn, i., 
c. 1 ; Tucker, Light of Nature, vol. ii., chap. 2. — V. Acroa- 

MATICAL. 

ESSENCE {essentia, from essens, the old participle of esse, to be 
— introduced into the Latin tongue by Cicero). 

u Sicut ab eo quod est sapere, vocatur sapientia; sic ab eo 
quod est esse, vocatur essentia." — August., De Civ., lib. xii., 
c. 11. 

u Totum illud per quod res est, et est id quod est.'' 1 — Chauvin, 
Lexicon Philosoph. 

" Essence may be taken for the very being of anything, 
whereby it is what it is." — Locke, Essay on Hum. Under- 
stand., book iii., chap. 3, sect. 15. 

Mr. Locke distinguishes the real and the nominal essence. 
The nominal essence depends upon the real essence ; thus the 
nominal essence of gold, is that complex idea which the 
word " gold" represents; viz., u a body yellow, heavy, 
malleable, fusible, and fixed;" but its real essence is the 
constitution of its insensible parts, on which these qualities 
and all its other properties depend, which is wholly unknown 
to us. 

" The essence of things is made up of that common nature 
wherein it is founded, and of that distinctive nature by which 
it is formed. This latter is commonly understood when we 
speak of the formality or formalis ratio (the formal con- 
sideration) of things ; and it is looked upon as being more 
peculiarly the essence of things, though 'tis certain that a 
triangle is as truly made up in part of figure, its common 
nature, as of the three lines and angles, which are distinctive 
and peculiar to it. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 169 

ESSENCE— 

u The essence of a thing most properly and strictly is, what 
does first and fundamentally constitute that thing, and that 
only is strictly essential which is either the whole or some 
part of the constituent essence; in man to be a living 
creature, or to be capable of religion; his being capable of 
celestial happiness, may be called essential in the way of 
consequence, or consecutively, not constituency." — Oldfield, 
Essay on Reason, p. 1 84. 

" Whatever makes a thing to be what it is, is properly 
called its essence. Self- consciousness, therefore, is the essence 
of the mind, because it is in virtue of self- consciousness that 
the mind is the mind — that a man is himself." — Ferrier, Inst, 
of Metaphys., p. 245. 

u All those properties or qualities, without which a thing 
could not exist, or without which it would be entirely altered, 
make up what is called the essence of a thing. Three lines 
joining are the essence of a triangle ; if one is removed, 
what remains is no longer a triangle." — Taylor, Elements of 
Thought. 

The essential attributes, faciunt esse entia, cause things to 
be what they are. 

The Greeks had but one word for essence and substance, 
viz., ovatx. The word vTroarccatg was latterly introduced. By 
Aristotle ova let was applied — 1. To the form, or those qualities 
which constitute the specific nature of every being. 2. To the 
matter, in which those qualities manifest themselves to us — 
the substratum or subject (y7rox,zip,svoi>). 3. To the concrete 
or individual being (vvvohov), constituted by the union of the 
two preceding. 

In the scholastic philosophy a distinction began to be 
established between essence and substance. Substance was 
applied to the abstract notion of matter — the undetermined 
subject or substratum of all possible forms, to vvroKtipiuov; 
Essence to the qualities expressed in the definition of a thing, 
or those ideas which represent the genus and species. Des- 
cartes defined substance as u that which exists so that it needs 
nothing but itself to exist" — (Princip. Philosoph., pars, 4, 
sect. 1) — a definition applicable to deity only. Essence he 



170 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

ESSENCE— 

stripped of its logical signification, and made it the foundation 
of all those qualities and modes which we perceive in matter. 
Among the attributes of every substance there is one only 
which deserves the name of essence, and on which the others 
depend as modifications — as extension, in matter, and thought, 
in mind. He thus identified essence and substance. But exten- 
sion supposes something extended, and thought something 
that thinks. With Leibnitz essence and substance were the 
same, viz., force or power. 

Essence is analogically applied to things having no real ex- 
istence ; and then it retains its logical sense and expresses the 
qualities or ideas which should enter into the definition; as 
when we speak of the essence of an equilateral triangle being 
three equal sides and three equal angles. This is the only 
sense in which Kant recognizes the word. In popular language 
essence is used to denote the nature of a thing. 

ETERNITY is a negative idea expressed by a positive term. It 
supposes a present existence, and denies a beginning or an end 
of that existence. Hence the schoolmen spoke of eternity, a 
parte ante, and a parte post. The Scotists maintained that 
eternity is made up of successive parts, which drop, so to speak, 
one from another. The Thomists held that it is simple dura- 
tion, excluding the past and the future. Plato said, time is the 
moving shadow of eternity. The common symbol of eternity is 
a circle. It may be doubted how far it is competent to the 
human mind to compass in thought the idea of absolute begin- 
ning, or the idea of absolute ending. 

On man's conception of eternity, see an Examination of Mr. 
Maurice's Theory of a Fixed State out of Time. By Mr. 
Mansel. 

" What is eternity ? can aught 
Paint its duration to the thought ? 
Tell all the sand the ocean laves, 
Tell all its changes, all its waves, 
Or, tell with more laborious pains, 
The drops its mighty mass contains; 
Be this astonishing account 
Augmented with the full amount 
Of all the drops that clouds have shed, 
Where'er their wat'ry fleeces spread, 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 171 

ETERNITY— 

Through all time's long protracted tour, 
From Adam to the present hour;— 
Still short the sum, nor can it vie 
With the more numerous years that lie 
Embosomed in eternity. 
Attend, man, with awe divine, 
For this eternity is thine." — Gibbons. 

ETERNITY (OF GOD). — Deus non est duratio vel spatium, sed 
durat et adest. This scholium of Sir Isaac Newton contains 
the germ of Dr. Clarke's Demonstration of the Being of God. 
Time and space are qualities, and imply a substance. The 
ideas of time and space necessarily force themselves upon our 
minds. We cannot think of them as not existing. And as we 
think of them as infinite, they are the infinite qualities of an 
infinite substance, that is, of God, necessarily existing. 

ETHICS "extend to the investigation of those principles by which 
moral men are governed ; they explore the nature and excel-' 
lence of virtue, the nature of moral obligation, on what it is 
founded, and what are the proper motives of practice; moral- 
• ity in the more common acceptation, though not exclusively, 
relates to the practical and obligatory part of ethics. Ethics 
principally regard the theory of morals." — Cogan, Ethic. Treat, 
on Passions, Intro d. 

Aristotle (Eth., lib. 2), says that nQos, which signifies moral 
virtue, is derived from ehg 9 custom ; since it is by repeated acts 
that virtue, which is a moral habit, is acquired. Cicero (De 
Fato, cap. 1), says, Quia pertinet ad mores, quod n6ig illi vocant, 
nos earn partem philosophies, De moribus, appellare solemus: sed 
decet augentem linguam Latinam nominare Moralem. Ethics is 
thus made synonymous with morals or moral philosophy — q. v. 
Ethics taken in its widest signification, as including the 
moral sciences or natural jurisprudence, may be divided into — 

1. Moral Philosophy, or the science of the relations, rights, 
and duties, by which men are under obligation towards God, 
themselves, and their fellow- creatures. 

2. The Law of Nations, or the science of those laws by which 
all nations, as constituting the universal society of the human 
race, are bound in their mutual relations to one another. 

3. Public or Political Law, or the science of the relations 
between the different ranks in society. 



172 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

ETHICS— 

4. Civil Law, or the science of those laws, rights, and duties, 
by which individuals in civil society are bound, — as commer- 
cial, criminal, judicial, Roman, or modern. 

5. History, Profane, Civil, and Political. — Peemans, Introd. 
ad Philosoph., p. 96. 

ETHIVOGBAPHY (Ifoog and y£*0flj), and ETHNOLOGY bear 
the same relation almost to one another as geology and geo- 
graphy. While ethnography contents herself with the mere 
description and classification of the races of man, ethnology, or 
the science of races, " investigates the mental and physical 
differences of mankind, and the organic laws upon which they 
depend ; seeks to deduce from these investigations principles 
of human guidance, in all the important relations of social 
and national existence." 

u Ethnology treats of the different races into which the 
human family is subdivided, and indicates the bonds which bind 
them all together." — Donaldson, New Cratylus, p. 13. 

Ethnological Journal, June 1, 1848 ; Edin. Rev., Oct., 1844. 
ETHOLOGY (J00£, or Uog, and "hoyog), is a word coming to be 
used in philosophy. Sir William Hamilton has said that Aris- 
totle's Rhetoric is the best ethology extant, meaning that it 
contains the best account of the passions and feelings of the 
human heart, and of the means of awakening and interesting 
them so as to produce persuasion or action. Mr. Mill calls 
ethology the science of the formation of character. — Log., book 
vi., chap. 5. 
EUDEUIONISM (evloupovi'ct, happiness), is a term applied by 
German philosophers to that system of morality which places 
the foundation of virtue in the production of happiness. — 
Whewell, Pref. to Mackintosh's Dissert., p. 20. 

This name, or rather Hedonism, may be applied to the 
system of Chrysippus and Epicurus. 
EtTRETIC or EURISTIC- V. OSTENSIVE. 

EVIDENCE (e and video, to see, to make see). — "Evidence signifies 

that which demonstrates, makes clear, or ascertains the truth 

of the very fact or point in issue, either on the one side or the 

other." — Blackstone, Comment., b. iii., c. 23. 

Evidence is the ground or reason of knowledge. It is the 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 173 

EVIDENCE— 

light by which the mind apprehends things presented to it. 
Fidgor quidam mentis assensum rapiens. 

In an act of knowledge there is the object or thing known, 
and the subject or person knowing. Between the faculties of 
the person knowing and the qualities of the thing known, there 
is some proportion or relation. The qualities manifest them- 
selves to the faculties, and the result is knowledge; or the 
thing is made evident — that is, it not only exists, but is revealed 
as existing. 

There are as many kinds of evidence as there are powers or 
faculties by which we attain to truth. But according as truth 
may be attained, more or less directly, evidence is distinguished 
into intuitive and deductive. 

Intuitive evidence comprehends all first truths, or principles of 
common sense, as, " every change implies the operation of a 
cause" — axioms, in science, as, "things equal to the same 
thing are equal to one another" — and the evidence of con- 
sciousness, whether by sense, or memory, or thought, as when 
we touch, or remember, or know, or feel anything. Evidence 
of this kind arises directly from the presence or contemplation 
of the object, and gives knowledge without any effort upon 
our parts. 

Deductive evidence is distinguished as demonstrative and pro- 
bable. 

Demonstrative evidence rests upon axioms, or first truths, 
and from which, by ratiocination, we attain to other truths. It 
is scientific, and leads to certainty. It admits not of degrees ; 
and it is impossible to conceive the contrary of the truth which 
it establishes. 

Probable evidence has reference, not to necessary, but con- 
tingent truth. It admits of degrees, and is derived from various 
sources ; the principal are the following, viz. : — Experience, 
Analogy, and Testimony — q. v. 

Glassford, Essay on Principles of Evidence, 8vo, Edin., 
1820 ; Campbell, Philosophy of Rhetoric, book i. ; Gambier, On 
Moral Evidence, 8vo, Lond., 1824; Smedley, Moral Evidence, 
8vo, Lond, 1850 ; Butler, Analogy, Introd. ; Locke, Essay on 
Hum. Understand-, book iv., chap. 15. 



174 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

EVffli is the negation or contrary of good. — "That which hath in 
it a fitness to promote its own preservation or well-being, is 
called good. And, on the contrary, that which is apt to hinder 
it, is called evil" — Wilkins, Nat. Relig., booki. 

u Every man calleth that which pleaseth, and is delightful to 
himself, good ; and that evil which displeaseth him." — Hobbes, 
Hum. Nat., chap. 7. 

Pleasure is fit for, or agreeable to, the nature of a sensible 
being, or a natural good; pain is unfit, or is a natural evil. 

u The voluntary application of this natural good and evil to 
any rational being, or the production of it by a rational being, 
is moral good and evil." — King, Essay on Origin of Evil, trans- 
lated by Law, chap. 1, sect. 3, notes, p. 38, fifth edit. 

" Metaphysical evil consists simply in imperfection, physical 
evil in suffering, and moral evil in sin." — Leibnitz, On Goodness 
of God, part 1, sect. 21. 

" Evil does not proceed from a principle of evil. Cold does 
not proceed from a principle of coldness, nor darkness from a 
principle of darkness. Evil is mere privation." — Part 2, sect. 
153. 

Evil is not a generation, but a degeneration ; and as Augus- 
tine often expresses it, it has not an efficient, but only a defi- 
cient cause. — De Civ. Dei, 1. 17, c. 7. 

Metaphysical evil is the absence or defect of powers and 
capacities, and the consequent want of the higher enjoyment 
which might have flowed from the full and perfect possession 
of them. It arises from the necessarily limited nature of all 
created beings. 

Physical evil consists in pain and suffering. It seems to be 
necessary as the contrast and heightener of pleasure or enjoy- 
ment, and is in many ways productive of good. 

Moral evil originates in the will of man, who could not have 
been capable of moral good without being liable to moral evil, a 
power to do right being, ex necessitate rei, a power to do wrong. 

The question concerning the origin of evil has been answered 
by — 1. The doctrine of pre-existence, or that the evils we are 
here suffering are the punishments or expiations of moral 
delinquencies in a former state of existence. 2. The doctrine 
of the Manicheans which supposes two co-eternal and inde- 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 175 

EVIIi— 

pendent agencies, the one the author of good, and the other of 
evil. 3. The doctrine of optimism, or, that evil is part of a 
system conducted by Almighty power, under the direction of 
infinite wisdom and goodness. — Stewart, Act. and Mor. Vow., 
b. iii., c. 3, sect. 1. 

On the origin of evil, its nature, extent, uses, &c, see Plato, 
Cicero, and Seneca, Malebranche and Fenelon, Clarke and 
Leibnitz, Bledsoe, Theodicy ; Young, Mystery; King, J. Miiller. 
example.— V. Analogy. 

EXCLUDED uommle. — Principium exclusi medii inter duo 
contradictoria. — u By the principle of 'Contradiction' we are 
forbidden to think that two contradictory attributes can 
both be present in the same object; by the principle of 
1 Excluded Middle ' we are forbidden to think that both can be 
absent. The first tells us that both differentiae must be com- 
patible with the genus : I cannot, for example, divide animal 
into animate and inanimate. The second tells us that one or 
the other must be found in every member of the genus ; but in 
what manner this is actually carried out, whether by every 
existing member possessing one of the differentiae and none 
of the other, or by some possessing one and some the other, 
' experience alone can determine." — Mansel, Prolegom. Log., p. 
193. 

The formula of this principle is — "Everything is either A or 
not A : everything is either a given thing, or something which 
is not that given thing." That there is no mean between two 
contradictory propositions is proved by Aristotle, Metaphys., 
book iii., ch. 7. "So that if we think a judgment true, we 
must abandon its contradictory; if false, the contradictory 
must be accepted." — Thomson, Laws of Thought, p. 295. 
EXISTENCE (exsisto, to stand out). — " The metaphysicians look 
upon existence as the formal and actual part of a being." — H. 
More, Antid. agt. Atheism, app., c. 44. 

It has been called the actus entitativus, or that by which 
anything has its essence actually constituted in the nature of 
things. 

Essence pertains to the question, Quid est ? 

Existence pertains to the question, An est? 



176 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

EXISTENCE— 

Essence formal, combined with essence substantial, gives 
existence ; for existence is essence clothed with form. — Tiber- 
ghien, Essai des Connaiss. Hum., p. 739, note. 

Existence is the actuality of essence. It is the act by which 
the essences of things are actually in rerum natura — beyond 
their causes. Before things are produced by their causes, they 
are said to be in the objective power of their causes ; but when 
produced they are beyond their causes, and are actually in 
rerum natura— as maggots before they are warmed into life by 
heat of the sun. 

"Existentia est unio realis, sive actualis conjunctio partium 

sive attributorum quibus ens constat Existentia 

dicitur quasi rei extra causas et nihilum sistentia." — Peemans, 
Introd. ad Philosophy 12mo, Lovan, 1840, p. 45. 
Existence and Essence.— Incaute sibi finxerunt quidam, "Essen- 
tias quasdam easque eternas, fuisse sine existentia ;" siquando 
autem subnascatur Res istiusmodi idem similis, tunc censent 
existentiam essential supervenientem, veram rem efficere, sive ens 
reale. Atque hinc, essentiam et existentiam dixerunt essendi 
principia, sive entis constitutiva. Quicquid vero essentiam habet 
veram, eodem tempore habet existentiam, eodem sensu quo habet 
essentiam, aut quo est ens, aut aliquid" — Hutcheson, Metaphys., 
p. 4. 

" Essence, in relation to God, must involve a necessary ex- 
istence; for we cannot in any measure duly conceive what he is, 
without conceiving that he is, and, indeed, cannot but be. The 
name he takes to himself is I am (or, I will be). This is the 
contraction of that larger name, I am what I am (or, I will be 
what I will be), which may seem closely to conjoin God's 
unquestionable necessary existence with his unsearchable, 
boundless essence." — Oldfield, Essay on Reason, p. 48. 

See art. "Existence," in French Encyclopedic, by Mons.Turgot. 
EXOTERIC— F. Esoteric. 
EXPEDIENCY (doctrine of). — Paley has said, •" Whatever is 

expedient is right." — V. Utility (Doctrine of). 
EXPERIENCE (ipnu^itx,, experientia), — According to Aristotle 
(Analyt. Poster., ii., 19), from sense comes memory, but from 
repeated remembrance of the same thing we get experience. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 177 

EXPERIENCE— 

Wolf used experience as co-extensive with the contents of 
consciousness, to include all of which the mind is conscious, as 
agent or patient, all that it does from within, as well as all 
that it suffers from without. u Experiri dicimur, quicquid ad 
perceptiones nostras attenti cognoscimus. Solem lucere, cog- 
noscimus ad ea attenti, quce visu percipimus. Unde experientia 
constare dicitur, quod sol luceat. Similiter ad nosmet ipsos 
attenti cognoscimus, nos non posse assensum prsebere contra- 
dictoriis, v. g. non posse sumere tanquam verum, quod simul 
pluit et non pluit." — PMlosoph. Rat., sect. 664:. 

"Experience, in its strict sense, applies to what has occurred 
within a person's own knowledge. Experience, in this sense 
of course, relates to the past alone. Thus it is that a man 
knows by experience what sufferings he has undergone in some 
disease ; or what height the tide reached at a certain time and 
place. More frequently the word is used to denote that judg- 
ment which is derived from experience in the primary sense, by 
reasoning from that in combination with other data. Thus a 
man may assert, on the ground of experience, that he was cured 
of a disorder by such a medicine — that that medicine is gene- 
rally beneficial in that disorder ; that the tide may always be 
expected, under such circumstances, to rise to such a height. 
Strictly speaking, none of these can be known by experience, 
but are conclusions from experience. It is in this sense only 
that experience can be applied to the future, or, which comes 
to the same thing, to any general fact; as, e. g., when it is 
said that we know oy experience that water exposed to a certain 
temperature will freeze." — Whately, Log., app. i. 

Mr. Locke {Essay on Hum. Understand., book ii., chap. 1), 
has assigned experience as the only and universal source of 
human knowledge. u Whence hath the mind all the materials 
of reason and knowledge? To this I answer, in one word, 
from experience; in that, all our knowledge is founded, and 
from that ultimately derives itself. Our observation, employed 
either about external sensible objects, or about the internal 
- operations of our minds, perceived and reflected on by our- 
selves, is that which supplies our understanding with all tin- 
materials of thinking. These are the fountains of knowledge 

N 



178 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

EXPERIENCE— 

from whence all the ideas we have, or can naturally have, do 
spring — that is, sensation and reflection." 

In opposition to this view, according to which all human 
knowledge is a posteriori, or the result of experience, it is con- 
tended that man has knowledge a priori — knowledge which 
experience neither does nor can give, and knowledge without 
which there could be no* experience — inasmuch as all the gene- 
ralizations of experience proceed and rest upon it. 

"No accumulation of experiments tohatever can bring a general 
law home to the mind of man; because if we rest upon experi- 
ments, our conclusion can never logically pass beyond the bounds 
of our premises ; we can never infer more than we have proved ; 
and all the past, which we have not seen, and the future, which we 
cannot see, is still left open, in which new experiences may arise 
to overturn the present theory. And yet the child will believe 
I at once upon a single* experiment. Why? Because a hand 
divine has implanted in him the tendency to generalize thus 
rapidly. Because he does it by an instinct, of which he can 
give no account, except that he is so formed by his Maker."- 
Sewell, Christ. Mor., chap. 24. 

" We may have seen one circle, and investigated its proper- 
ties, but why, when our individual experience is so circum- 
scribed, do we assume the same relations of all? Simply 
because the understanding has the conviction intuitively that 
similar objects will have similar properties ; it does not acquire 
this idea by sensation or custom ; the mind develops it by its 
own intrinsic force — it is a law of our faculties, ultimate and 
universal, from which all reasoning proceeds." — Dr. Mill, 
Essays, p. 337. 

Experience, more especially in physical philosophy, is either 
active or passive, that is, it is constituted by observation and 
experiment. 

" Observationes fiunt spectando id quod natura per seipsam 
sponte exhibet. Experimenta fiunt ponendo naturam in eas 
circumstantias, in quibus debeat agere, et nobis ostendere id 
quod queer imus." — Boscovich, Note to Stay's Poem, De Sys- 
temate. 

* As having been once burnt by fire, 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 179 

EXPERIENCE— 

These are more fully explained and characterized in the 
following passage from Sir John Herschel, On the Study of 
Xat. Pail., Lardner's Cyclop., No. xiv., p. 67: — 

" The great, and indeed the only ultimate source of our 
knowledge of nature and its laws is experience; by which we 
mean not the experience of one man only, or of one generation, 
but the accumulated experience of all mankind in all ages, 
registered in books, or recorded by tradition. But experience 
maybe acquired in two ways: either, first, by noticing facts as 
they occur, without any attempt to influence the frequency of 
their occurrence, or to vary the circumstances under which they 
occur • this is observation: or secondly, by putting in action 
causes and agents over which we have control, and purposely 
varying their combinations, and noticing what effects take 
place : this is experiment. To these two sources we must look 
as the fountains of all natural science. It is not intended, 
however, by thus distinguishing observation from experiment, to 
place them in any kind of contrast. Essentially they are much 
alike, and differ rather in degree than in kind ; so that, perhaps, 
the terms passive and active observation might better express 
their distinction; but it is, nevertheless, highly important to 
mark the different states of mind in inquiries carried on by 
them respective aids, as well as them different effects in pro- 
moting the progress of science. In the former, we sit still and 
listen to a tale, told us, perhaps obscurely, piecemeal, and at 
long intervals of time, with our attention more or less awake. 
It is only by after rumination that we gather its full import : 
and often, when the opportunity is gone by. we have to regret 
that our attention was not more particularly directed to some 
point which, at the time, appeared of little moment, but of 
which we at length appreciate the importance. In the latter, 
on the other hand, we cross-examine our witness, and by 
comparing one part of his evidence with the other, while he is 
yet before us, and reasoning upon it in his presence, are 
enabled to put pointed and searching questions, the answer to 
which may at once enable us to make up our minds. Accord- 
ingly it has been found invariably, that in those departments of 
physics where the phenomena are beyond our control, or into 



180 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

EXPERIENCE — 

which experimental inquiry, from other causes, has not been 
carried, the progress of knowledge has been slow, uncertain, 
and irregular ; while in such as admit of experiment, and in 
which mankind have agreed to its adoption, it has been rapid, 
sure, and steady." — V. Analogy. 

EXPERIMENT. — V. OBSERVATION. 

EXPERIMENTUM CRUCIS. — A crucial or decisive experiment 
in attempting to interpret the laws of nature; so called, by 
Bacon, from the crosses or way-posts used to point out roads, 
because they determine at once between two or more possible 
conclusions. 

Bacon (Nov. Org., book ii., sect. 36) says, " Crucial in- 
stances are of this kind ; when in inquiry into any nature the 
intellect is put into a sort of equilibrium, so that it is uncertain 
to which of two, or sometimes more natures, the cause of the 
nature inquired into ought to be attributed or assigned, on 
account of the frequent and ordinary concurrence of more 
natures than one ; the instances of the cross show that the union 
of the one nature with the nature sought for is faithful and 
indissoluble ; while that of the other is varied and separable ; 
whence the question is limited, and that first nature received as 
the cause, and the other sent off and rejected." 

Sir G. Blane (Med. Log., p. 30), notices that in chemistry a 
single experiment is conclusive, and the epithet experimentum 
cruris applied ; because the crucible derives its name from the 
figure of the cross being stamped upon it. 

A and B, two different causes, may produce a certain number 
of similar effects ; find some effect which the one produces and 
» the other does not, and this will point out, as the direction - 
post (crux), at a point where two highways meet, which of 
these causes may have been in operation in any particular 
instance. Thus, many of the symptoms of the Oriental plague 
are common to other diseases ; but when the observer discovers 
the peculiar bubo or boil of the complaint, he has an instantia 
cruris which directs him immediately to its discovery. 

" If all that the senses present to the mind is sensations, 
Berkeley must be right ; but Berkeley assumed this premiss 
without any foundation or any proof of it. The size and shape 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 181 

EXPERIMENTUM CRUCIS— 

of things are presented to us by our senses, yet every one 
knows that size and shape are not sensations. 

" This I would therefore humbly propose as an experimentum 
cruris, by which the ideal system must stand or fall ; and it 
brings the matter to a short issue. Extension, figure, and 
motion, may — anyone or all of them — be taken for the subject 
of this experiment. Either they are ideas of sensation, or they 
are not. If any one of them can be shown to be an idea of 
sensation, or to have the least resemblance to any sensation, 
I lay my hand upon my mouth, and give up all pretence to 
reconcile reason to common sense in this matter, and must 
suffer the ideal scepticism to triumph." — Reid, Inquiry into 
Hum. Mind, ch. 5, sect. 7. 

" If, in a variety of cases presenting a general resemblance, 
whenever a certain circumstance is present, a certain effect 
follows, there is a strong probability that one is dependent 
on the other ; but if you can also find a case where the circum- 
stance is absent from the combination, and the effect also 
disappears, your conclusion has all the evidence in its favour 
of which it is susceptible. When a decisive trial can be made 
by leaving out, in this manner, the cause of which we wish to 
trace the effect, or by insulating any substances so as to exclude 
all agents but those we wish to operate, or in any other way, 
such a decisive trial receives the title of experimentum cruris. 
One of the most interesting on record is that of Dr. Franklin, 
by which he established the identity of lightning and the 
electricity of our common machines.'' — S. Bailey, Discourses, 
Lond., 1852, p. 169. 
EXTENSION (exiendo, to stretch from). — "The notions acquired 
by the sense of touch, and by the movement of the body, 
compared with what is learnt by the eye, make up the idea 
expressed by the word extension." — Taylor, Elements of 
Thought 

Extension is that property of matter by which it occupies 
space ; it relates to the qualities of length, breadth, and thick- 
ness, without which no substance can exist ; but has no respect 
to the size or shape of a body. Solidity is an essential quality 
of matter as well as extension. And it is from the resist anee 



182 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

EXTENSION— 

of a solid body, as the occasion, that we get the idea of exter- 
nality — q. v. 

According to the Cartesians, extension was the essence of 
matter. " Sola igitur extensio corporis naturam constituit, 
quum ilia omni solum semperque conveniat, adeo ut nihil in 
corpore prius percipere possumus." — Le Grand, Inst. Philosophy 
pars iv., p. 152. 

Hobbes's views are given, Phil. Prima, pars ii., c. 8, sect. 1. 

Locke's views are given, Essay on Hum. Understand., b. ii., 
chap. 13, see also chap. 15; Reid, Inquiry, c. 5, sect. 5, 6; 
IntelL Pow., essay ii., c. 19. 
Extension (Logical), when predicated as belonging to a general 
term, means the number of objects included under it, and 
comprehension means the common characters belonging to such 
objects. 

" I call the comprehension of an idea, those attributes which 
it involves in itself, and which cannot be taken away from 
it without destroying it; as the comprehension of the idea 
triangle includes extension, figure, three lines, three angles? 
and the equality of these three angles to two right angles, &e. 

" I call the extension of an idea those subjects to which 
that idea applies, which are also called the inferiors of a 
general term, which, in relation to them, is called superior, 
as the idea of triangle in general extends to all the different 
sorts of triangles." — Port. Roy. Logic, part i., chap. 6. 

We cannot detach any properties from a notion without 
extending the list of objects to which it is applied. Thus, 
if we abstract from a rose its essential qualities, attending 
only to those which it connotes as a plant, we extend its 
application, before limited to flowers with red petals, to the 
oak, fir, &c. But as we narrow the sphere of a notion, the 
qualities which it comprehends proportionally increase. If we 
restrict the term body to animal, we include life and sensation 
— if to man, it comprehends reason. 

Thus emerges the law of the inverse ratio between the 
extension of common terms and their comprehension, viz., the 
greater the extension the less the comprehension, and vice 
versa. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 183 

EXTERNALITY or OUTNESS. — u Pressure or resistance neces- 
sarily supposes externality in the thing which presses or resists." 
— Adam Smith, On the Senses. 

" Distance or outness is neither immediately of itself per- 
ceived by sight, nor yet apprehended or judged of by lines 
and angles, but is only suggested to our thoughts," &c. — 
Berkeley, Principles of Knowledge, part i., sect. 43. — V. 
Perception. 



FABIiE. — "The word fable is at present generally limited to those 
fictions in which the resemblance to the matter in question is 
not direct but analogical." — Whately, Rhet., part i., ch. 2, § 8. 
Fable and Myth were at one time synonyms. " Fables of 
iEsop and other eminent mythologists," by Sir K. L'Estrange, 
fol., Lond., 1704. — V. Apologue. 

FACT. — " Whatever really exists, whether necessarily or relatively, 
may be called a fact. A statement concerning a number of 
facts, is called a doctrine (when it is considered absolutely as a 
truth), and a law (when it is considered relatively to an intelli- 
gence ordaining or receiving it)." — Irons, On Final Causes, p. 48. 
By a matter of fact, in ordinary usage, is meant some- 
thing which might, conceivably, be submitted to the senses; 
and about which it is supposed there could be no disagreement 
among persons who should be present, and to whose senses it 
should be submitted; and by a matter of opinion is understood 
anything respecting which an exercise of judgment would be 
called for on the part of those who should have certain objects 
before them, and who might conceivably disagree in their 
judgment thereupon." — Whately, Rhet., pt. i., ch. 2, § 4. — V. 
Opinion. 

"By a matter of fact, I understand anything of which we 
obtain a conviction from our internal consciousness, or any 
individual event or phenomenon which is the object of sensa- 
tion." — Sir G-. C. Lewis, Essay on Influence of Authority. 
pp. 1-4. 

It is thus opposed to matter of inference. Thus, the destrnc- 
tiveness of cholera is matter of fact, the mode of its propa- 



184 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

FACT— 

gation is matter of inference. Matter of fact also denotes what 
is certain, as opposed to matter of doubt. The existence of 
God is matter of fact, though ascertained by reasoning. 

a The distinction of fact and theory is only relative. Events 
and phenomena considered as particulars which may be col- 
ligated by induction, are facts; considered as generalities 
already obtained by colligation of other facts, they are theories. 
The same event or phenomenon is a fact or a theory, according 
as it is considered as standing on one side or the other of the 
inductive bracket." — Whewell, Philosoph. Induct. Sciences, 
aphorism 23. 

"Theories which are true, are facts." — Whewell, On Induc- 
tion, p. 23. — V. Opinion. 
FACTITIOUS (factito, to practise), is applied to what is the 
result of use or art, in distinction to what is the product of 
nature. Mineral waters made in imitation of the natural 
springs are called factitious. 

Cupiditas aliorum existimationis non est factitia sed nobis 
congenita; deprehenditur enim et in infantibus qui, etiam ante 
refiectionis usum, molestia afficiuntur, quum parvi a ceteris 
penduntur. — N". Lacoudre, Inst. Philosoph., torn, iii., p. 21. 

"It is enough that we have moral ideas, however obtained; 
whether by original constitution of our nature, or factitiously, 
makes no difference." — Hampden, Introd. to Mor. Philosophy 
p. 13. 

"To Mr. Locke, the writings of Hobbes suggested much of 
the sophistry displayed in the first book of his essay on the 
factitious nature of our moral principles." — Stewart, Prelim, 
Dissert., p. 64. 
FACSJIiTlT. — Facultates sunt aut quibus facilius^, aut sine quibus 
omnino confici non potest. — Cicero, De Invent., lib. ii., 40. 

Facultas est qucelibet vis activa, seu virtus, seu potestas. Solet 
etiam vocari potentia, verum tunc intelligenda estpotentia activa, 
seu habilitas ad agendum. — Chauvin, Lexicon Philosoph, 

" The word faculty is most properly applied to those powers 
of the mind which are original and natural, and which make 
part of the constitution of the mind." — Reid, Intell. Pow., 
essay i., chap* 1. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 185 

FACUIiTY— 

A faculty is the natural power by which phenomena are 
produced by a person that is an agent, who can direct and 
concentrate the power which he possesses. — Joufrroy, Melanges, 
Bruxell, 1834, p. 249. 

Bodies have the property of being put in motion, or of being 
melted. The magnet has an attractive power. Plants have a 
medical virtue. But instead of blind and fatal activity, let the 
being who has power be conscious of it, and be able to exercise 
and regulate it; this is what is meant by faculty. It implies 
intelligence and freedom. It is personality which gives the 
character of faculties to those natural powers which belong to 
us. — Diet, des Sciences Philosoph. 

u The faculties of the mind and its powers,'- says Dr. Beid. 
" are often used as synonymous expressions. But," continues 
he, u as most synonyms have some minute distinction that 
deserves notice, I apprehend that the word faculty is most 
properly applied to those powers of the mind which are original 
and natural, and which make part of the constitution of the 
mind. There are other powers which are acquired by use. 
exercise, or study, which are not called faculties, but habits. 
There must be something in the constitution of the mind 
necessary to our being able to acquire habits, and this is com- 
monly called capacity." 

Such are the distinct meanings which Dr. Beid would assign 
to these words, and these meanings are in accordance both with 
their philosophical and more familiar use. The distinction 
between power and faculty is, that faculty is more properly 
applied to what is natural and original, in opposition or con- 
trast to what is acquired. We say the faculty of judging, but 
the power of habit. But, as all our faculties are powers, we 
can apply the latter term equally to what is original and to 
what is acquired. And we can say, with equal propriety, the 
power of judging and the power of habit. The acquiring of 
habits is peculiar to man : at least the inferior animals do so to 
a very limited extent. There must, therefore, be something in 
the constitution of the human mind upon which the acquiring 
of habits depends. This, says Dr. Beid, is called a capacity. 
The capacity is natural, the habit is acquired. Dr. Beid did 



186 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

FACULTY- 

not recognize the distinction between active and passive power. 
But a capacity is a passive power. The term is applied to 
those manifestations of mind in which it is generally regarded 
as passive, or as affected or acted on by something external to 
itself. Thus, we say a man is capable of gratitude, or love, or 
grief, or joy. We speak also of the capacity of acquiring 
knowledge. Now, in these forms of expression, the mind is 
considered as the passive recipient of certain affections or im- 
pressions coming upon it. Taking into account the distinction 
of powers as active and passive, u these terms," says Sir Wm. 
Hamilton (Raid's Works, p. 221), " stand in the following rela- 
tions. Powers are active and passive, natural and acquired. 
Powers natural and active are called faculties. Powers 
natural and passive, capacities or receptivities. Powers 
acquired are habits, and habit is used both in an active and 
passive sense. The power, again, of acquiring a habit is called 
a disposition." This is quite in accordance with the explana- 
tions of Dr. Reid, only that instead of disposition he employs 
the term capacity, to denote that on which the acquiring of 
habits is founded. Disposition is employed by Dr. Reid to 
denote one of the active principles of our nature. 

One great end and aim of philosophy is to reduce facts and 
phenomena to general heads and laws. The philosophy of 
mind, therefore, endeavours to arrange and classify the opera- 
tions of mind according to the general circumstances under 
which they are observed. Thus we find that the mind fre- 
quently exerts itself in acquiring a knowledge of the objects 
, around it by means of the bodily senses. These operations 
vary according to the sense employed, and according to the 
object presented. But in smelling, tasting, and touching, and 
in all its operations by means of the senses, the mind comes to 
the knowledge of some object different from itself. This 
general fact is denoted by the term perception ; and we say 
that the mind, as manifested in these operations, has the power 
or faculty of perception. The knowledge which the mind thus 
acquires can be recalled or reproduced, and this is an operation 
which the mind delights to perform, both from the pleasure 
which it feels in reviving objects of former knowledge, and the 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 187 

FACULTY— 

benefit which results from reflecting upon them. But the re- 
calling or reproducing objects of former knowledge is an act 
altogether different from the act of originally obtaining it. It 
implies the possession of a peculiar power to perform it. And 
hence we ascribe to the mind a power of recollection or a 
faculty of memory. A perception is quite distinct from a recol- 
lection. In the one we acquire knowledge which is new to us — 
in the other we reproduce knowledge which we already possess. 

In the operations of recollection or memory it is often neces- 
sary that the mind exert itself s to exclude some objects which 
present themselves, and to introduce others which do not at 
first appear. In such cases the mind does so by an act of re- 
solving or determining, by a volition. Now, a volition is alto- 
gether different from a cognition. To know is one thing, to 
will is quite another thing. Hence it is that we assign these 
different acts to different poAvers, and say that the mind has a 
power of understanding, and also a power of willing. The 
power of understanding may exert itself in different ways, and 
although the end and result of all its operations be knowledge, 
the different ways in which knowledge is acquired or improved 
may be assigned, as we have seen they are, to different powers or 
faculties — but these are all considered as powers of understand- 
ing. In like manner the power of willing or determining may- 
be exerted under different conditions, and, for the sake of 
distinctness, these may be denoted by different terms ; but still 
they are included in one class, and called powers of the will. 

Before the will is exerted we are in a state of pleasure or 
pain, and the act of will has for its end to continue that state 
or to terminate it. The pleasures and the pains of which we 
are susceptible are numerous and varied, but the power or 
capacity of being affected by them is denoted by the term 
sensibility or feeling. And we are said not only to have powers 
of understanding and will, but powers of sensibility. 

When we speak, therefore, of a power or faculty of the mind, 
we mean that certain operations of mind have been observed, 
and classified according to the conditions and circumstances 
under which they manifest themselves, and that distinct nanus 
have been given to these classes of phenomena, to mark what 



188 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

FACULTY— 

is peculiar in the act or operation, and consequently in the 
power or faculty to which they are referred. But when we 
thus classify the operations of the mind, and assign them to 
different powers, we are not to suppose that we divide the 
mind into different compartments, of which each has a different 
energy. The energy is the same in one and all of the oper- 
ations. It is the same mind acting according to different con- 
ditions and laws. The energy is one and indivisible. It is only 
the manifestations of it that we arrange and classify. 

This is well put by the famous Alcuin, who was the friend 
and adviser of Charlemagne, in the following passage, which is 
translated from his work De Ratione Animce: — u The soul bears 
divers names according to the nature of its operations ; inas- 
much as it lives and makes live, it is the soul (anima) ; inasmuch 
as it contemplates, it is the spirit (spiritus) ; inasmuch as it 
feels, it is sentiment (sensus); since it reflects, it is thought 
(animus); as it comprehends, intelligence (mens); inasmuch as 
it discerns, reason (ratio); as it consents, will (voluntas); as it 
recollects, memory (memoria). But these things are not 
divided in substance as in name, for all this is the soul, and one 
soul only." 
Faculties of the Mind (Classification of). — The faculties of the 
human mind were formerly distinguished as gnostic or cogni- 
tive, and orectic or appetent. They have also been regarded 
as belonging to the understanding or to the will, and have been 
designated as intellectual or active. A threefold classification 
of them is now generally adopted, and they are reduced to the 
heads of intellect or cognition, of sensitivity or feeling, and of 
activity or will. Under each of these heads, again, it is 
common to speak of several subordinate faculties. 

u This way of speaking of faculties has misled many into a 
confused notion of so many distinct agents in us, which had 
their several provinces and authorities, and did command, obey, 
and perform several actions, as so many distinct beings : which 
has been no small occasion of wrangling, obscurity, and un- 
certainty, in questions relating to them." — Locke, Essay on 
Hum. Understand., book ii., chap. 21, § 17, 20. 

Dr. Brown, instead of ascribing so many distinct faculties to 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 189 

FACULTY- 

the mind, which is one, would speak of it as in different states, 
or under different affections. — Lecture xvi. — V. Operations 
of the Mind. 

u Les divers facultes que Ton considere dans Tame, ne sont 
point des choses distinctes reellement, mais le meme etre dif- 
ferenient considere." — Arnaud, Des Vrais et des Fausses Idees, 
ch. 27. 

" Quoique nous donnions a ces facultes des noms differents, 
par rapport a leur diverses operations, cela ne nous oblige 
pas a les regarder comme des choses differentes, car l'entende- 
ment n'est autre chose que Tame, en tant qu'elle retient et se 
ressouvient ; la volonte n'est autre chose que Tame, en tant 

qu'elle veut et qu'elle choisit De sorte qu'on 

peut entendre que toutes ces facultes ne sont, au fond, que 
le meme ame, qui, recoit divers noms, a cause de ses differentes 
operations." — Bossuet, Connaissance de Dieu, ch. 1, art. 20. 

" Man is sometimes in a predominant state of intelligence, 
sometimes in a predominant state of feeling, and sometimes in 
a predominant state of action and determination. To call 
these, however, separate faculties, is altogether beside the 
mark. No act of intelligence can be performed without the 
will, no act of determination without the intellect, and no act 
either of the one or the other without some amount of feeling 
being mingled in the process. Thus, whilst they each have 
their own distinctive characteristics, yet there is a perfect 
unity at the root." — Morell, Psychology, p. 61. 

" I feel that there is no more reason for believing my mind 
to be made up of distinct entities, or attributes, or faculties, 
than that my foot is made up of walking and running. My 
mind, I firmly believe, thinks, and wills, and remembers, just 
as simply as my body walks, and runs, and rests." — Irons. 
Final Causes, p. 93. 

" It would be well if, instead of speaking of l the powers 
(or faculties) of the mind' (which causes misunderstanding). 
we adhered to the designation of the several L operations of 
one mind ; ' which most psychologists recommend, but in the 
sequel forget." — Feuchtersleben, Medical Psychol., 8vo, 1847, 
p. 120. 



190 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

FACULTY— 

" The judgment is often spoken of as if it were a distinct 
power or faculty of the soul, differing from the imagination, 
the memory, &c, as the heart differs from the lungs, or the 
brain from the stomach. All that ought to be understood by 
these modes of expression is, that the mind sometimes com- 
pares objects or notions ; sometimes joins together images ; 
sometimes has the feeling of past time with an idea now 
present, &c." — Taylor, Elements of Thought. 

" Notwithstanding we divide the soul into several powers 
and faculties, there is no such division in the soul itself, since 
it is the whole soul that remembers, understands, wills, or 
imagines. Our manner of considering the memory, under- 
standing, will, imagination, and the like faculties, is for the 
better enabling us to express ourselves in such abstracted 
subjects of speculation, not that there is any such division in 
the soul itself." — Spectator, ISTo. 600. 

" The expression, ' man perceives, and remembers, and 
imagines, and reasons,' denotes all that is conveyed by the 
longer phrase, l the mind of man has the faculties of percep- 
tion, and memory, and imagination, and reasoning.'" — S. 
Bailey, Letters on Philosoph. Hum. Mind, p. 13. 

" Herbart rejects the whole theory of mental inherent 
faculties as chimerical, and has, in consequence, aimed some 
severe blows at the psychology of Kant. But, in fact, it is 
only the rational psychology which Kant exploded, which 
is open to this attack. It may be that in mental, as in physical 
mechanics, we know force only from its effects ; but the con- 
sciousness of distinct effects will thus form the real basis of 
psychology. The faculties may then be retained as a con- 
venient method of classification, provided the language is 
properly explained, and no more is attributed to them than is 
warranted by consciousness. The same consciousness which 
tells me that seeing is distinct from hearing, tells me also that 
volition is distinct from both ; and to speak of the faculty of 
will does not necessarily imply more than the consciousness of 
a distinct class of mental phenomena." — Mansel, Prolegom. 
Log., p. 34, note. 
FAITH.— V. Belief. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 191 

FAJLIiACY (A) is an argument, or apparent argument, profess- 
ing to decide the matter at issue, while it really does not. 
Fallacies have been arranged as logical, semi-logical, and non- 
logical. By Aristotle they were arranged in two classes 
— according as the fallacy lay in the form, in dictione ; or in 
the matter, extra dictionem. The fallacies, in form or expres- 
sion, are the following : — 

Fallacia J^qaivocatioiaas, arising from the use of an equivocal 
word ; as, the dog is an animal ; Sirius is the dog ; therefore, 
Sirius is an animal. 

Fallacia AmpMbolise, arising from doubtful construction ; quod 
tangitur a Socrate illud sentit ; columna tangitur a Socrate; 
ergo columna sentit. In the major proposition sentit means 
u Socrates feels." In the conclusion, it means " feels Socrates." 

Fallacia Compositionis, when what is proposed, in a divided 
sense, is afterwards taken collectively ; as, two and three are 
even and odd ; five is two and three ; therefore five is even 
and odd. 

Fallacia TOlvisionis, when what is proposed in a collective, is 
afterwards taken in a divided sense ; as, the planets are seven ; 
Mercury and Venus are planets ; therefore Mercury and Venus 
are seven. 

Fallacia Accentus, when the same thing is predicated of differ- 
ent terms, if they be only written or pronounced in the same 
way; as, Equus est quadrupes; Aristides est cequus; ergo 
Aristides est quadrupes. 

Fallacia Figurse Dictionls, when, from any similitude between 
two words, what is granted of one is, by a forced application, 
predicated of another ; as, projectors are unfit to be trusted ; 
this man has formed a project ; therefore, this man is unfit to 
be trusted. 

Fallacies in the matter, or extra dictionem, according to 
some, are the only fallacies strictly logical ; while, according 
to the formal school of logicians, they are beyond the province 
of logic altogether. 

Fallacia Accidentia) when what is accidental is confounded with 
what is essential; as, we are forbidden to kill ; using capital 
punishment is killing ; we are forbidden to use capital punish- 
ment. 



192 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

FALLACY- 

Fallacia a Dicto Secundum quid ad Dictum Simpliciter, 

when a term is used, in one premiss, in a limited, and in the 
Other in an unlimited sense ; as, the Ethiopian is white as to 
his teeth ; therefore he is white, 

Fallacia Ignorationis ElencM, an argument in which the point 
in dispute is intentionally or ignorantly overlooked, and the 
conclusion is irrelevant ; as if any one, to show the inutility of 
the art of logic, should prove that men unacquainted with it 
have reasoned well. 

Fallacia a non Causa pro Causa, is divided into fallacia a 
non vera pro vera, and fallacia a non tali pro tali; as, "a 
comet has appeared, therefore, there will be war." a What 
intoxicates should be prohibited. Wine intoxicates." Excess 
of it does. 

Fallacia Consequentis, when that is inferred which does not 
logically follow ; as, u he is an animal ; therefore he is a man." 

Fallacia Petitionis Friucipii (begging the question), when that 
is assumed for granted, which ought to have been proved ; as, 
when a thing is proved by itself (called petitio statim), " he 
. is a man, therefore, he is a man; or by a synonym; as, u a 
sabre is sharp, therefore a scimitar is ; " or by anything equally 
unknown; as, Paradise was in Armenia, therefore, Gihon is 
an Asiatic river; or by anything more unknown; as, u this 
square is twice the size of this triangle, because equal to this 
circle;" or by reasoning in a circle, i. e., when the disputant 
tries to prove reciprocally conclusion from premises, and 
premises from conclusion ; as, u fire is hot, therefore it burns ;" 
and afterwards, " fire burns, therefore it is hot ;" " the stars 
twinkle, therefore they are distant;" "the stars are distant, 
therefore they twinkle." 

Fallacia Plurium Interogationniu, when two or more questions, 
requiring each a separate answer, are proposed as one, so that 
if one answer be given, it must be inapplicable to one of 
the particulars asked ; as, " was Pisistratus the usurper and 
BCOOKge of Athens?" The answer "no" would be false of 
the former particular, and " yes" would be false of the latter. 
The fallacy is overthrown by giving to each particular a 
separate reply. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 193 

FAJLSE, FALSITY. — The false, in one sense, applies to things ; 
and there is falsity either when things really are not, or when 
it is impossible they can be ; as when it is said that the pro- 
portion of the diagonal to the side of a square is commensur- 
able, or that you sit — the one is absolutely false, the other 
accidentally — for in the one case and the other the fact 
affirmed is not. 

The false is also predicated of things which really exist, but 
which appear other than they are, or what they are not; a 
portrait, or a dream. They have a kind of reality, but they 
really are not what they represent. Thus, we say that things 
are false, either because they do not absolutely exist, or because 
they are but appearances and not realities. 
Falsity is opposed to verity or truth — q. v. 
To transcendental truth, or truth of being, the opposite is 
nonentity rather than falsity. A thing that really is, is what it 
is. A thing that is not is a nonentity. Falsity, then, is twofold 
— objective and formal. Objective falsity is when a thing 
resembles a thing which it really is not, or when a sign or 
proposition seems to represent or enunciate what it does not. 
Formal falsity belongs to the intellect when it fails to discover 
objectively falsity, and judges according to appearances rather 
than the reality and truth of things. Formal falsity is error; 
which is opposed to logical truth. To moral truth, the opposite 
is falsehood or lying, 

FANCY ((pxvTciGLct). — "Imagination or phantasy, in its most ex- 
tensive meaning, is the faculty representative of the phenomena 
both of the internal and external worlds." — Sir W. Hamilton, 
ReioVs Works, note b, sect. 1. 

"In the soul 
Are many lesser faculties, that serve 
Reason as chief; among them fancy next 
Her office holds ; of all external things 
Which the five watchful senses represent 
She forms imaginations, airy shapes." 

Milton, Paradise Lost, book v. 

" Where fantasy, near handmaid to the mind, 

Sits and beholds, and doth discern them all ; 
Compounds in one things different in their kind, 

Compares the black and white, the great and small." 

Sir John Davios, Immortality. 




194 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

FANCY— 

44 When nature rests, 
Oft in her absence mimic fancy wakes 
To imitate her, but, misjoining shapes, 
Wild work produces oft, but most in dreams." 

" Tell me where is fancy bred, 
Or in the heart, or in the head ? 
How begot, how nourished ? 

Merch. of Venice, act iii., scene 2L 

44 Break, Phantsie, from thy cave of cloud, 

And wave thy purple wings, 
Now all thy figures are allowed, 

And various shapes of things. 
Create of airy forms a stream ; 

It must have blood and nought of phlegm; 
And though it be a waking dream, 

Yet let it like an odour rise 
To all the senses here, 

And fall like sleep upon their eyes, 
Or music on their ear." — Ben Jonson. 

" How various soever the pictures of fancy, the materials? 
according to some, are all derived from sense; so that the 
maxim — Nihil est in intellectu nisi prius fuerit in sensu — though 
not true of the intellect, holds with regard to the phantasy" — 
Monboddo, Ancient Metaphys., b. ii., ch. 7. 

Addison said (Spectator, No. 411), that he used the words 
imagination and fancy indiscriminately. 

Mr. Stewart said {Elements, chap. 5), "It is obvious that a 
creative imagination, when a person possesses it so habitually 
that it may be regarded as forming one characteristic of his 
genius, implies a power of summoning up at pleasure a par- 
ticular class of ideas ; and of ideas related to each other in a 
particular manner ; which power can be the result only of 
certain habits of association, which the individual has acquired. 
It is to this power of the mind, which is evidently a particular 
turn of thought, and not one of the common principles of our 
nature," that Mr. Stewart would appropriate the name fancy. 
"The office of this power is to collect materials for the 
imagination ; and therefore, the latter power presupposes the 
former, while the former does not necessarily suppose the latter. 
A man whose habits of association present to him, for illustrat- 
ing or embellishing a subject, a number of resembling or 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 195 

FANCY— 

analogous ideas, we call a man of fancy ; but for an effort of 
imagination, various other powers are necessary, particularly 
the powers of taste and judgment ; without which we can hope 
to produce nothing that will be a source of pleasure to others. 
It is the power of fancy which supplies the poet with meta- 
phorical language, and with all the analogies which are the 
foundation of his allusions : but it is the power of imagination 
that creates the complex scenes he describes, and the fictitious 
characters he delineates. To fancy we apply the epithets 
of rich or luxuriant ; to imagination, those of beautiful or 
sublime.' 7 

Fancy was called by Coleridge " the aggregative and associa- 
tive power. " But Wordsworth says, " To aggregate and to 
associate, to evoke and to combine, belong as well to imagina- 
tion as to fancy. But fancy does not require that the materials 
which she makes use of should be susceptible of change in their 
constitution from her touch*, and, where they admit of modifi- 
cation, it is enough for her purpose if it be slight, limited, and 
evanescent. Directly the reverse of these are the desires and 
demands of the imagination. She recoils from everything but 
the plastic, the pliant, and the indefinite." — Wordsworth, 
Preface to Works, vol. L, 12mo, Lond., 1836. — V. Imagina- 
tion. 

FATALISM, FATE.— " Fatum is derived from fari; that is, to 
pronounce, to decree; and in its right sense, it signifies the 
decree of Providence. " — Leibnitz, Fifth Paper to Dr. Clarke. 
** Fate, derived, from the Latin fari, to speak, must denote the 
word spoken by some intelligent being who has power to make 
his words good." — Tucker, Light of Nature, vol. ii., part ii., 
chap. 26. 

Among all nations it has been common to speak of fate or 
destiny as a power superior to gods and men — swaying all 
things irresistibly. This may be called the fate of poets and 
mycologists. Philosophical fate is the sum of the laws of the 
universe, the product of eternal intelligence, and the blind 
properties of matter. Theological fate represents Deity as 
above the laws of nature, and ordaining all things according to 
his will — the expression of that will being the law. 



196 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

FATAIISM- 

Leibnitz {Fifth Paper to Dr. Samuel Clarke) says : — " There 
is a Fatum Mahometanum, a Fatum Stoicum, and a Fatum 
Christianum. The Turkish fate will have an effect to happen, 
even though its cause should be avoided ; as if there was an 
absolute necessity. The Stoical fate will have a man to be 
quiet, because he must have patience whether he will or not, 
since 'tis impossible to resist the course of things. But 'tis 
agreed that there is Fatum Christianum, a certain destiny of 
everything, regulated by the fore -knowledge and providence of 
God." 

u Fatalists that hold the necessity of all human actions and 
events, may be reduced to these three heads — First, such as 
asserting the Deity, suppose it irrespectively to decree and 
determine all things, and thereby make all actions necessary to 
us ; which kind of fate, though philosophers and other ancient 
writers have not been altogether silent of it, yet it has been 
principally maintained by some neoteric Christians, contrary to 
the sense of the ancient church. Secondly, such as suppose a 
Deity that, acting wisely, but necessarily, did contrive the 
general frame of things in the world ; from whence, by a 
series of causes, doth unavoidably result whatsoever is so done 
in it: which fate is a concatenation of causes, all in themselves 
necessary, and is that which was asserted by the ancient Stoics, 
Zeno, and Chrysippus, whom the Jewish Essenes seemed to 
follow. And, lastly, such as hold the material necessity of all 
things without a Deity ; which fate Epicurus calls ?w tZu 
Qvatxcou sipc&^uevYiv, the fate of the naturalists, that is, indeed, 
the atheists, the assertors whereof may be called also the 
Democritical fatalists." — Cudworth, Intell. Syst., book L, 
chap. 1. 

Cicero, De Fato; Plutarchus, Be Fato; Grotius, Philoso- 
phorum Sentential De Fato. 

FEAE is one of the passions. It arises on the conception or con- 
templation of something evil coming upon us. 

FEEtilNO. — "This word has two meanings. First, it signifies 
the perceptions we have of external objects, by the sense of 
touch. When we speak of feeling a body to be hard or soft, or 
rough or smooth, hot or cold, to feel these things is to perceive 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 197 

FEEMNG-— 

them by touch. They are external things, and that act of the 
mind by which we feel them is easily distinguished from the 
objects felt. Secondly, the word feeling is used to signify the 
same thing as sensation; and in this sense, it has no object; 
the feeling and the thing felt are one and the same. 

" Perhaps betwixt feeling, taken in this last sense, and 
sensation, there may be this small difference, that sensation is 
most commonly used to signify those feelings which we have 
by our external senses and bodily appetites, and all our bodily 
pains and pleasures. But there are feelings of a nobler nature 
accompanying our affections, our moral judgments, and our 
determinations in matters of taste, to which the word sensa- 
tion is less properly applied."* — Keid, Intell. Pow., essay i., 
chap. 1. 

" Feeling, beside denoting one of the external senses, is a 
general term, signifying that internal act by which we are made 
conscious of our pleasures and our pains ; for it is not limited, 
as sensation is, to any one sort. Thus, feeling being the genus 
of which sensation is a species, their meaning is the same when 
applied to pleasure and pain felt at the organ of sense ; and 
accordingly we say indifferently, C I feel pleasure from heat, 
and pain from cold ; ' or, ' I have a sensation of pleasure from 
heat and of pain from cold.' But the meaning of feeling, as is 
said, is much more extensive. It is proper to say, I feel 
pleasure in a sumptuous building, in love, in friendship ; and 
pain in losing a child, in revenge, in envy; sensation is not 
properly applied to any of these. 

" The term feeling is frequently used in a less proper sense, 
to signify what we feel or are conscious of ; and in that sense it 
is a general term for all our passions and emotions, and for all 
our other pleasures and pains. 1 ' — Karnes, Elements of Criticism, 
Appendix. 

All sensations are feelings ; but all feelings are not sensations. 
Sensations are those feelings which arise immediately and solely 
from a state or affection of the bodily organism. But we have 

* The French use of sensation— as when we say such an occurrence excited a great 
sensation, that is, feeling of surprise, or indignation, or satisfaction, is becoming more 
common. 



198 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

FEELING — 

feelings which are connected not with our animal, but with out 
intellectual, and rational, and moral nature ; such as feelings of 
the sublime and beautiful, of esteem and gratitude, of approba- 
tion and disapprobation. Those higher feelings it has been 
proposed to call Sentiments — q. v. 

From its most restricted sense of the perceiving by the sense 
of touch, feeling has been extended to signify immediate per- 
ceiving or knowing in general. It is applied in this sense to 
the immediate knowledge which we have of first truths or the 
principles of common sense. " By external or internal percep- 
tion, I apprehend a phenomenon of mind or matter as existing; 
I therefore affirm it to be. Now, if asked how I know, or am 
assured, that what I apprehend as a mode of mind, may not, in 
reality, be a mode of mind; I can only say, using the simplest 
language, c I know it to be true, because I feel, and cannot but 
feel,\ or c because I believe, and cannot but believe,' it so to be. 
And if further interrogated how I know, or am assured that I 
thus feel or thus believe, I can make no better answer than, in 
the one case, 'because I believe that I feel; 1 in the other, 'be- 
cause I feel that I believe.'' It thus appears, that when pushed 
to our last resort, we must retire either upon feeling or belief 
or upon both indifferently. And, accordingly, among philoso- 
phers, we find that a great many employ one or other of these 
terms by which to indicate the nature of the ultimate ground to 
which our cognitions are reducible ; while some employ both, 
even though they may award a preference to one. ... In 
this application of it we must discharge that signification of the 
word by which we denote the phenomena of pain and pleasure." 
— Sir William Hamilton, Reitfs Works, note A, sect. 5. — V. 
Belief. 
FETICHTSITI is supposed to have been the first form of the 
theological philosophy; and is described as consisting in the 
ascription of life and intelligence essentially analogous to our 
own, to every existing object, of whatever kind, whether 
organic or inorganic, natural or artificial. — (Comte, Philosoph. 
Positive, i., 3.) The Portuguese call the objects worshipped by 
the negroes of Africa fe tisso — bewitched or possessed by fairies. 
Such are the grisgris of Africa, the manitous and the ockis of 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 199 

FETICHISUI— 

America, and the burkhans of Siberia — good and evil genii 
inhabiting the objects of nature which they worship. The 
priests of this worship are called griots in Africa, jongleurs or 
jugglers in America, and chamanes in Central Asia. 

Mr. Grote (Hist, of Greece, vol. v., p. 22), in reference 
to Xerxes scourging the Hellespont which had destroyed 
his bridge, remarks, that the absurdity and childishness of the 
proceeding is no reason for rejecting it as having actually 
taken place. "To transfer," continues he, u to inanimate 
objects the sensitive as well as the willing and designing 
attributes of human beings, is among the early and wide- 
spread instincts of mankind, and one of the primitive forms 
of religion ; and although the enlargement of reason and 
experience gradually displaces this elementary fetichism, and 
banishes it from the region of reality into those of conventional 
fictions, yet the force of momentary passion will often suffice 
to supersede the acquired habit, and even an intelligent man 
may be impelled in a moment of agonizing pain to kick or beat 
the lifeless object from which he has suffered" 

Dr. Reid was of opinion that children naturally believed all 
things around them to be alive — a belief which is encouraged 
by the education of the nursery. And when under the smarting 
of pain we kick or strike the inanimate object which is the 
occasion of it, we do so, he thought, by a momentary relapse 
into the creed of infancy and childhood. 

figure.— V. Syllogism. 

FITNESS and UNFITNESS " most frequently denote the con- 
gruity or incongruity, aptitude or inaptitude, of any means 
to accomplish an end. But when applied to actions, they 
generally signify the same with right and wrong; nor is it often 
hard to determine in which of these senses these words are to 
be understood. It is worth observing that ftness in the former 
sense is equally undefinable with, ftness in the latter ; or, that it 
is as impossible to express in any other than synonymous words, 
what we mean when we say of certain objects, c that they have 
& fitness to one another ; or &vefit to answer certain purposes,' 
as when we say, 'reverencing the Deity is fit, or beneficence is 
Jit to be practised.' In the first of these instances, none can 



200 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

FITNESS— 

avoid owning the absurdity of making an arbitrary sense the 
source of the idea of fitness, and of concluding that it signifies 
nothing real in objects, and that no one thing can be properly 
the means of another. In both cases the term fit signifies a 
simple perception of the understanding." — Price, Review, ch. 6. 

According to Dr. Samuel Clarke, virtue consists in acting 
in conformity to the nature and fitness of things. In this 
theory the term fitness does not mean the adaptation of an 
action, as a means towards some end designed by the agent ; 
but a congruity, proportion, or suitableness between an action 
and the relations, in which, as a moral being, the agent stands. 
Dr. Clarke has been misunderstood on this point by Dr. 
Brown (Lect. lxxvi.) and others. See Wardlaw, Christ. Ethics, 
note E. 

" Our perception of vice and its desert arises from, and is 
the result of, a comparison of actions with the nature and 
capacities of the agent. And hence arises a proper application 
of the epithets incongruous, unsuitable, disproportionate, unfit, 
to actions which our moral faculty determines to be vicious." — 
Butler, Dissertation on Virtue. 

In like manner, when our moral faculty determines actions 
to be virtuous, there is a propriety in the application of the 
epithets congruous, suitable, proportionate, fit. 
FORCE is an energy or power which has a tendency to move a 
body at rest, or to affect or stop the progress of a body already 
in motion. This is sometimes termed active force, in contra- 
distinction to that which merely resists or retards the motion 
of a body, but is itself apparently inactive. But according to 
Leibnitz, by whom the term force was introduced into modern 
philosophy, no substance is altogether passive. Force, or a 
continual tendency to activity, was originally communicated 
by the Creator to all substances, whether material or spiritual. 
Every force is a substance, and every substance is & force. The 
two notions are inseparable ; for you cannot think of action 
without a being, nor of a being without activity. A substance 
entirely passive is a contradictory idea. See Leibnitz, De 
primce Philosophice emendatione, et de notione substantial* — V. 
Monad. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 201 

FORCE— 

In like manner Boscovick maintained that the ultimate 
particles of matter are indivisible and unextended points, 
endowed with the forces of attraction and repulsion. — h 
tationes eluce de virions vivis, Ito, 1745. See also Stewart, 
Philosophical Essays, essay ii., chap. 1. 

According to the dynamic theory of Kant, and the atomic 
theory of Leucippus. the phenomena of matter were explained 
by attraction and repulsion. 

"La force proprement elite, cest ce qui regit les actes. sans 
refer les volontes." If this definition of force, which is given 
by Mons. Comte, be adopted, it woidd make a distinction 
between force and power. Power extends to volitions as well 
as to operations, to mind as well as matter. But we also speak 
of force as physical, vital, and mental. 
FORJI " is that of which matter is the receptacle." says Lord 
Monboddo (Ancient MetapJiys., book ii., chap. 2). A trumpet 
may be said to consist of two parts ; the matter or brass of 
which it is made, and the form which the maker gives to it. 
The latter is essential, but not the former : since although the 
matter were silver, it would still be a trumpet ; but without 
the form it would not. Xow, although there can be no form 
without matter, yet as it is the form which makes the thing 
what it is. the word form came to signify essence or nature. 
•• Form is the essence of the thing, from which result not only 
its figure and shape, but all its other qualities." 

Matter void of form, but ready to receive it, was called, 
in metaphysics, materia prima, or elementary; in allusion to 
which Butler has made Hudibras say, that he 

Professed 
He had first matter seen undressed, 
And found it naked and alone. 
Before one rag of form was on. 

Form was defined by Aristotle Kayo: tyjs ovaict:. aw 
o'jgicc signifies, equally, substance and essence, hence came 
the question whether form should be called substantial or 
essential : the Peripatetics espousing the former epithet, and 
the Cartesians the latter. 



202 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

FORM— 

According to the Peripatetics, in any natural composite 
body, there were — 1. The matter. 2. Quantity, which fol- 
lowed the matter. 3. The substantial form. 4. The qualities 
which followed the form. According to others, there were 
only — 1. Matter. 2. Essential form ; as quantity is identified 
with matter, and qualities with matter or form 9 or the com- 
pound of them. 

According to the Peripatetics, form was a subtle substance, 
penetrating matter, and the cause of all acts of the compound ; 
in conformity with the saying, for race est agere, mater ice vero 
pati. According to others, form is the union of material 
parts, as atoms, or elements, &c, to which some added a 
certain motion and position of the parts. — Derodon, Pliys., 
pars prima, pp. 11, 12. 

He who gives form to matter, must, before he do so, have 
in his mind some idea of the particular form which he is 
about to give. And hence the word form is used to signify 
an idea. 

Idea and Law are the same thing, seen from opposite points. 
"That which contemplated objectively (that is, as existing exter- 
nally to the mind), we call a law ; the same contemplated sub- 
jectively (that is, as existing in a subject or mind), is an idea. 
Hence Plato often names ideas laws ; and Lord Bacon, the 
British Plato (?), describes the laws of the material universe as 
ideas in nature. Quod in natura naturata lex, in natura natu- 
rante idea dicturp — Coleridge, Church and State, p. 12. In Nov. 
Org., ii., 17, Bacon says, " When we speak of forms, we 
understand nothing more than the laws and modes of action 
which regulate and constitute any simple nature, such as heat, 
light, weight, in all kinds of matter susceptible of them ; so 
that the form of heat, or the form of light, and the law of 
heat, and the law of light, are the same thing." Again he 
says, " Since the form of a thing is the very thing itself, and 
the thing no otherwise differs from the form, than as the 
apparent differs from the existent, the outward from the 
inward, or that which is considered in relation to man from 
that which is considered in relation to the universe, it follows 
clearly that no nature can be taken for the true form, unless 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 203 

FORM— 

it ever decreases when the nature itself decreases, and in like 
manner is always increased when the nature is increased." — 
Nov. Org., 2, 13. 

As the word form denotes the law, so it may also denote 
the class of cases brought together and united by the law. 
u Thus to speak of the form of animals might mean, first, the 
law or definition of animal in general ; second, the part of 
any given animal by which it comes under the law, and is 
what it is ; and last, the class of animals in general formed 
by the law." — Thomson, Outline of Laws of Thought, p. 33, 
2d edit. 

" The sense attached at the present day to the words form 
and matter, is somewhat different from, though closely related 
to, these. The form is what the mind impresses upon its 
perceptions of objects, which are the matter ; form therefore 
means mode of viewing objects that are presented to the mind. 
When the attention is directed to any object, we do not see 
the object itself, but contemplate it in the light of our own 
prior conceptions. A rich man, for example, is regarded by 
the poor and ignorant under the form of a very fortunate 
person, able to purchase luxuries which are above their own 
reach ; by the religious mind under the form of a person with 
more than ordinary temptations to contend with ; by the 
political economist, under that of an example of the unequal 
distribution of wealth ; by the tradesman, under that of one 
whose patronage is valuable. JSow, the object is really the 
same to all these observers ; the same rich man has been re- 
presented under all these different forms. And the reason that 
the observers are able to find many in one, is that they con- 
nect him severally with their own prior conceptions. The form, 
then, in this view, is mode of knowing; and the matter is the 
perception, or object we have to know." — Ibid, p. 34. 

Sir W. Hamilton calls the theory of substantial forms, u the 
theory of qualities viewed as entities conjoined with, and not 
as mere dispositions or modifications of matter." — Reid's 
Works, p. 827. 

Aristotle, Metaphys., lib. 7 et 8 ; Michelet, Examen Critique 
de la Metaphysique iVAristote, 8vo, Paris, 1836, p. 164 et p. 287 ; 



204 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

FORM— 

Kavaisson, Essai sur la Metaphysique d'Aristote, 8vo, Paris, 
1837, torn i., p. 149.— V. Law, Matter. 

FORRiAiii,Y.— V. Real, Virtual, Action. 

FORTITUDE is one of the virtues called cardinal. It may 
display itself actively by resolution or constancy, which con- 
sists in adhering to duty in the face of danger and difficulty 
which cannot be avoided, or by intrepidity or courage, which 
consists in maintaining firmness and presence of mind in the 
midst of perils from which there may be escape. The displays 
of fortitude passively considered may be comprehended under 
the term patience, including humility, meekness, submission, 
resignation, &c. 

free wiul.— V. Liberty, Necessity, Will. 

FRIENDSHIP is the mutual affection cherished by two persons 
of congenial minds. It springs from the social nature of man, 
and rests on the esteem which each entertains for the good 
qualities of the other. The resemblance in disposition and 
character between friends may sometimes be the occasion of 
their contracting friendship ; but it may also be the effect of 
imitation and frequent and familiar intercourse. And the 
interchange of kind offices which takes place between friends 
is not the cause of their friendship, but its natural result. 
Familiarities founded on views of interest or pleasure are not 
to be dignified by the name of friendship. 

Dr. Brown (Lect. lxxxix.) has classified the duties of friend- 
ship as they regard the commencement of it, the continuance of 
it, and its close. 

See the various questions connected with friendship treated 
by Aristotle, in Ethics, books viii. and ix., and by Cicero, in 
his treatise Be Amicitia. 

FUNCTION (fung or, to perform). — u The pre -constituted forms 
or elements under which the reason forms cognitions and assigns 
laws, are called ideas. The capacities of the reason to know in 
different modes and relations, we shall call its functions." — 
Tappan, Log., p. 119. 

" The function of conception is essential to thought." The first 
intention of every word is its real meaning ; the second inten- 
tion, its logical value, according to the function of thought to 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 205 

FUNCTION— 

which it belongs." — Thomson, Outline of Laws of Thought, pp. 
25 and 40, 2d edit. 

u The function of names is that of enabling us to remember 
and to communicate our thoughts." — Mill, Log., b. ii., ch. 2, 

§2. 



GENERAL TERM. — V. TERM. 

GENERALIZATION "is the act of comprehending, under a com- 
mon name, several objects agreeing in some point which we 
abstract from each of them, and which that common name 
serves to indicate." 

" When we are contemplating several individuals which 
resemble each other in some part of their nature, we can (by 
attending to that part alone, and not to those points wherein 
they differ) assign them one common name, which will express 
or stand for them merely as far as they all agree ; and which, 
of course, will be applicable to all or any of them (which pro- 
cess is called generalization) ; and each of these names is called 
a common term, from its belonging to them all alike ; or a pre- 
dicable, because it may be predicated affirmatively of them or 
any of them." — Whately, Log., b. ii., ch. 5, § 2. 

Generalization is of two kinds — classification and generaliza- 
tion properly so called. 

When we observe facts accompanied by diverse circum- 
stances, and reduce these circumstances to such as are essen- 
tial and common, we obtain a law. 

When we observe individual objects and arrange them 
according to their common characters, we obtain a class. 
When the characters selected are such as belong essentially to 
the nature of the objects, the class corresponds with the law. 
When the character selected is not natural the classification is 
artificial. If we were to class animals into white and red, we 
would have a classification which had no reference to the laws 
of their nature. But if we classify them as vertebrate or inver- 
tebrate, we have a classification founded on their organization. 
Artificial classification is of no value in science, it is a mere aid 
to the memory. Natural classification is the foundation of all 



206 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

OENERAMZATIOIV— 

science. This is sometimes called generalization. It is more 
properly classification. — V. Classification. 

The law of gravitation is exemplified in the fall of a single 
stone to the ground. But many stones and other heavy bodies 
must have been observed to fall before the fact was generalized, 
and the law stated. And in this process of generalizing there 
is involved a principle which experience does not furnish. 
Experience, how extensive soever it may be, can only give the 
particular, yet from the particular we rise to the general, and 
affirm not only that all heavy bodies which have been observed, 
but that all heavy bodies whether they have been observed or 
not, gravitate. In this is implied a belief that there is order in 
nature, that under the same circumstances the same substances 
will present the same phenomena. This is a principle furnished 
by reason, the process founded on it embodies elements fur- 
nished by experience. — V. Induction. 

The results of generalization are general notions expressed by 
general terms. Objects are classed according to certain pro- 
perties which they have in common, into genera and species. 
Hence arose the question which caused centuries of acrimonious 
discussion. Have genera and species a real, independent 
existence, or are they only to be found in the mind? — 
V. Realism, Nominalism, Conceptualism. — Reid, Intell. 
Pow., essay v., chap. 6 ; Stewart, Elements, chap. 4. 

The principle of generalization is, that beings howsoever 
different agree or are homogeneous in some respect. 
C^ENrEJg (from geno, the old form of the verb gigno, to produce). 

This word was in ancient times applied to the tutelary god 
or spirit appointed to watch over every individual from his 
birth to his death. As the character and capacities of men 
were supposed to vary according to the higher or lower nature 
of their genius, the word came to signify the natural powers 
and abilities of men, and more particularly their natural in- 
clination or disposition. But the peculiar and restricted use of 
the term is to denote that high degree of mental power which 
produces or invents. u Genius" says Dr. Blair (Lectures on 
Rhetoric, lect. iii.), " always imports something inventive or 
creative." " It produces," says another, u what has never 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 207 

GENIUS— 

been accomplished, and which all in all ages are constrained 
to admire. Its chief elements are the reason and the imagina- 
tion, which are alone inventive and productive. According as 
one or other predominates, genius becomes scientific or artistic. 
In the former case, it seizes at once those hidden affinities 
which otherwise do not reveal themselves, except to the most 
patient and vigorous application ; and as it were intuitively 
recognizing in phenomena the unalterable and eternal, it 
produces truth. In the latter, seeking to exhibit its own ideas 
in due and appropriate forms, it realizes the infinite under 
finite types, and so creates the beautiful." 

" To possess the powers of common sense in a more eminent 
degree, so as to be able to perceive identity in things widely 
different, and diversity in things nearly the same ; this it is 
that constitutes what we call genius, that power divine, which 
through every sort of discipline renders the difference so con- 
spicuous between one learner and another." — Harris, Philosoph. 
Arrange., chap. 9. 

u Nature gives men a bias to their respective pursuits, and 
that strong propensity, I suppose, is what we mean by genius.'' 
— Caliper. 

Dryden has said, — 

" What the child admired, 
The youth endeavoured, and the man acquired.'" 

He read Polybius, with a notion of his historic exactness, 
before he was ten years old. Pope, at twelve, feasted his eyes 
in the picture galleries of Spenser. Murillo filled the margin 
of his schoolbooks with drawings. Le Brim, in the beginning 
of childhood, drew with a piece of charcoal on the walls of the 
house. — Pleasures, frc, of Literature, 12mo, Lond., 1851, pp. 
27, 28. 

u In its distinctive and appropriate sense, the term genius 
is applied to mind only when under the direction of its indi- 
vidual tendencies, and when those are so strong or clear as 
to concentrate all its powers upon the production of new, or at 
least independent results ; and that whether manifested in the 
regions of art or science. Bacon, Descartes, and Xewton. were 



208 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

GENIUS— 

no less men of genius, than Michael Angelo, Raphael, Shake- 
speare, and Scott, although the work they performed and the 
means they employed were different." — Moffat, Study of (Esthe- 
tics, p. 203, Cincinnati, 1856. 

Sharp, Dissertation on Genius, Lond., 1755 ; Duff, Essays 
on Original Genius, Lond., 1767 ; Gerard, Essay on Genius, 
Lond., 1774 ; Loelius and Hortensia • or, Thoughts on the Nature 
and Objects of Taste and Genius, Edin., 1782 ; Beattie, Dis- 
sertations, Of Imagination, chap. 3, 4to, Lond., 1783. 
Genius and Talent. — " Genius is that mode of intellectual power 
which moves in alliance with the genial nature ; i. e., with the 
capacities of pleasure and pain ; whereas talent has no vestige 
of such an alliance, and is perfectly independent of all human 
sensibilities. Consequently, genius is a voice or breathing that 
represents the total nature of man, and therefore, his enjoying 
and suffering nature, as well as his knowing and distinguishing 
nature ; whilst, on the contrary, talent represents only a single 
function of that nature. Genius is the language which inter- 
prets the synthesis of the human spirit with the human intellect, 
each acting through the other ; whilst talent speaks only of 
insulated intellect. And hence also it is that, besides its rela- 
tion to suffering and enjoyment, genius always implies a deeper 
relation to virtue and vice ; whereas talent has no shadow of a 
relation to moral qualities any more than it has to vital sensi- 
bilities. A man of the highest talent is often obtuse and below 
the ordinary standard of men in his feelings ; but no man of 
genius can unyoke himself from the society of moral perceptions 
that are brighter, and sensibilities that are more tremulous, 
than those of men in general." — De Quincey, Sketches, Crit. 
and Biograph., p. 275. 

genuine.- V. Authentic. 

GENUS is u a predicable which is considered as the material part 
of the species of which it is affirmed." — Whately, Log., b. ii, 
ch. 5, § 3. It is either summum or subalternum, that is, having 
no genus above it, as being, or having another genus above it, 
as quadruped ; proximum or remotum, when nothing intervenes 
between it and the species, as animal in respect of man, or 
when something intervenes, as animal in respect of a crow, for 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 209 

OENUS— 

between it and crow, brute and bird intervene. A genus physi- 
cum is part of the species, as animal in respect of man, who 
has an animal body and a rational soul. A genus metaphysicum 
is identified adequately with the species and distinguished from 
it extrinsically, as animal in respect of brute, colour in respect 
of blackness in ink. Logically the genus contains the species ; 
whereas metaphysically the species contains the genus; e.g., 
we divide logically the genus man into European, Asiatic, &c, 
but each of the species, European, &c, contains the idea of 
man, together with the characteristic difference. 

In modern classification, genus signifies "a distinct but sub- 
ordinate group, which gives its name as a prefix to that of all 
the species of which it is composed." 

CS-IVOITIE (yvcjpq) a weighty or memorable saying. — The saying in 
the parable (Matt. xx. 1-16), "Many that are first shall be 
last, and the last shall be first," is called by Trench (#/* the 
Parables, pp. 164, 165) a, gnome. — V. Adage. 

UOD, in Anglo-Saxon, means good. 

One of the names of the Supreme Being. The correspond- 
ing terms in Latin (JDeus) and in Greek (Qzog) were applied 
to natures superior to the human nature. With us, God always 
refers to the Supreme Being. 

That department of knowledge which treats of the being, 
perfections, and government of God, is Theology — q. v. 

" The true and genuine idea of God in general, is this — a 
perfect conscious understanding being (or mind), existing of 
itself from eternity, and the cause of all other things." — 
Cudworth, Intell Syst, b. i., ch. 4, sect. 4. 

" The true and proper idea of God, in its most contracted 
form, is this — a being absolutely perfect ; for this is that alone 
to which necessary existence is essential, and of which it is 
demonstrable." — Ibid, sect. 8. 

" I define God thus — an essence or being, fully and absolutely 
perfect. I say fully and absolutely perfect, in contradistinction 
to such perfection as is not full and absolute, but the perfection 
of this or that species or kind of finite beings, suppose a lion, 
horse, or tree. But to be fully and absolutely perfect, is to be, 
at least, as perfect as the apprehension of a man can conceive 



210 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

CJOI>— 

without a contradiction." — H. More, Antidote against Atheism, 
ch. 2. 
GOOD (The Chief). — An inquiry into the chief good, or the 
summum bonum, is an inquiry into what constitutes the perfec- 
tion of human nature and the happiness of the human condition. 
This has been the aim of all religion and philosophy. The 
answers given to the question have been many. Varro enume- 
rated 288; August., De Civit., lib. 19, cap. 1. But they may 
easily be reduced to a few. The ends aimed at by human 
action, how various soever they may seem, may all be reduced 
to three, viz., pleasure, interest and duty. What conduces to 
these ends we call good, and seek after; what is contrary to 
these ends we call evil, and shun. But the highest of these ends 
is duty, and the chief good of man lies in the discharge of duty. 
By doing so he perfects his nature, and may at the same time 
enjoy the highest happiness. 

" Semita certe 
Tranquilly per virtutem patet unica vitse." 

Juvenal, lib.iv., sat. 10. 

Cicero, De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum ; LVAbbe Anselme, 
Sur le Souverain bien des anciens, Mem. d. VAcad. des Inscript., 
et Belles Eettres, 1 ser., torn. v. — Joufiroy, Miscett.— V. 
Bonum (Summum). 
GBAMMAE (UniTersal).— This word grammar comes to us from 
the Greeks, who included under vkwn y^uppontaTixv) the art 
of writing and reading letters. But u grammar" says B. 
Johnson (English Grammar, c. 1), "is the art of true and 
well speaking a language ; the writing is but an accident.' 7 
Language is the expression of thought — thought is the 
operation of mind, aud hence language may be studied as a 
help to psychology. — Beid, IntelL Pow., essay i., chap. 5. 

Thought assumes the form of ideas or of judgments, that is, 
the object of thought is either simply apprehended or conceived 
of, or something is affirmed concerning it. Ideas are expressed 
in words, judgments by propositions ; so that as ideas are the 
elements of judgments, words are the elements of propositions. 

Every judgment involves the idea of a substance, of which 
some quality is affirmed or denied — so that language must have 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 211 

GRAMMAR- 

the substantive or noun, the adjective or quality, and the verb 
connecting or disconnecting. 

If the objects of our thoughts existed or were contemplated 
singly, these parts of speech would be sufficient. But the 
relations between objects and the connection between proposi- 
tions, render other parts of speech necessary. 

It is because we have ideas that are general, and ideas that 
are individual, that we have also nouns common and proper ; 
and it is because we have ideas of unity and plurality, that we 
have numbers, singular, dual, and plural. Tenses and moods 
arise from dividing duration, and viewing things as conditional 
or positive. Even the order or construction of language is to 
be traced to the calm or impassioned state of mind from which 
it proceeds. 

In confirmation of the connection thus indicated between 
grammar and psychology, it may be noticed that those who 
have done much for the one have also improved the other. 
Plato has given his views of language in the Cratylus, and 
Aristotle, in his Interpretation and Analytics, has laid the 
foundations of general grammar. And so in later times the 
most successful cultivators of mental philosophy have also been 
attentive to the theory of language. 

In Greek, the same word (koyog) means reason and language. 
And in Latin, reasoning is called discursus — a meaning which 
is made English by our great poet, when he speaks of u large 
discourse of reason." In all this the connection between the 
powers of the mind and language is recognized. 

Montemont, Grammaire General ou Philosophic des Langues, 
2 torn., 8vo, Paris, 1845 ; Beattie, Dissertations, Theory of 
Language, part ii., 4to, Lond., 1783 ; Monboddo, On the Origin 
and Progress of Language, 3 vols. 
grandeur. — u The emotion raised by grand objects is awful, 
solemn, and serious." 

" Of all objects of contemplation, the Supreme Being is the 

most grand The emotion which this grandest of 

all objects raises hi the mind is what we call devotion— a serious 
recollected temper, which inspires magnanimity, and dis 
to the most heroic acts of virtue. 



212 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

ORANJDEUR— 

"The emotion produced by other objects which may be 
called grand, though in an inferior degree, is, in its nature 
and in its effects, similar to that of devotion. It disposes to 
seriousness, elevates the mind above its usual state to a kind 
of enthusiasm, and inspires magnanimity, and a contempt of 
what is mean 

u To me grandeur in objects seems nothing else but such a 
degree of excellence, in one kind or another, as merits our 
admiration." — Reid, Intell, Pow., essay viii., chap. 3. — V. Sub- 
limity, Beauty, ^Esthetics. 
GRATITUDE is one of the affections which have been designated 
benevolent. It implies a sense of kindness done or intended, 
and a desire to return it. It is sometimes also characterized 
as a moral affection, because the party cherishing it has the 
idea that he who did or intended kindness to him has done 
right and deserves a return ; just as the party who has received 
an injury has not merely a sense or feeling of the wrong done, 
but a sense of injustice in the doing of it, and the feeling or 
conviction that he who did it deserves punishment. 

See Chalmers, Sketches of Mental and Moral Philosophy, 
chap. 8 ; Shaftesbury, Moralists, pt. hi., sect. 2. 
OYMNO^OPIIIST (yvpvog, naked; aoQog, wise). — " Among the 
Indians, be certain philosophers, whom they call gymnosophists, 
who from sun rising to the setting thereof are able to endure 
all the day long, looking full against the sun, without winking 
or once moving their eyes." — Holland, Pliny, b. vii., c. 2. 

The Brahmins, although their religion and philosophy were 
but little known to the ancients, are alluded to by Cicero. 
Tuscul., lib. v., c. 27 ; Arrian, Exped. Alexand., lib. vii., c. 1. 

Colebrooke and others in modern times have explained the 
Indian philosophy. 



HABIT (Jits, habitus). — u Habit, or state, is a constitution, frame, 
or disposition of parts, by which everything is fitted to act or 
suffer in a certain way." — Monboddo, Ancient Metaphys., chap. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 213 

HABIT- 

4. By Aristotle g§/£ is defined (Metaphys., lib. iv., cap. 20) 
to be, in one sense, the same with Ztafaais, or disposition. His 
commentators make a distinction, and say %%ig is more per- 
manent. A similar distinction has been taken in English 
between habit and disposition. 

Habits have been distinguished into natural and super- 
natural, or acquired and infused. Natural habits are those 
acquired by custom or repetition. Supernatural habits are such 
as are infused at once. They correspond to gifts or graces, 
and the consideration of them belongs to theology. 

Acquired habits are distinguished into intellectual and moral. 
From habit results power or virtue, and the intellectual habits 
or virtues are intellect, wisdom, prudence, science, and art. 
" These may be subservient to quite contrary purposes, and 
those who have them may exercise them spontaneously and 
agreeably in producing directly contrary effects. But the 
moral virtues, like the different habits of the body, are deter- 
mined by their nature to one specific operation. Thus, a man 
in health acts and moves in a manner conformable to his 
healthy state of body, and never otherwise, when his motions 
are natural and voluntary ; and in the same manner the habits 
of justice or temperance uniformly determine those adorned by 
them to act justly and temperately." — Arist., Ethic, lib. v., 
cap. 1. 

Habits have been distinguished as active or passive. The 
determinations of the will, efforts of attention, and the use 
of our bodily organs, give birth to active habits; the acts 
of the memory and the affections of the sensibility, to passive 
habits. 

Aristotle {Ethic., lib. iii.) proves that our habits are volun- 
tary, as being created by a series of voluntary actions. " But 
it may be asked, does it depend merely on our own will to 
correct and reform our bad habits f It certainly does not ; 
neither does it depend on the will of a patient, who has despised 
the advice of a physician, to recover that health which has been 
lost by profligacy. When we have thrown a stone we cannot 
restrain its flight; but it depended entirely on ourselves whether 
we should throw it or not." 



214 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

HABIT— 

Actions, according to Aristotle, are voluntary throughout ; 
habits only as to their beginnings. 

Thurot (De V Entendement, torn, i., p. 138) calls " habit the 
memory of the organs, or that which gives memory to the 
organs." 

Several precepts can be given for the wise regulation of the 
exercises of the mind as well as of the body. We shall enu- 
merate a few of them. 

u The first is, that we should, from the very commencement, 
be on our guard against tasks of too difficult or too easy a 
nature ; for, if too great a burden be imposed, in the diffident 
temper you will check the buoyancy of hope, in the self-con- 
fident temper you will excite an opinion whereby it will promise 
itself more than it can accomplish, the consequence of which 
will be sloth. But in both dispositions it will happen that the 
trial will not answer the expectation, a circumstance which 
always depresses and confounds the mind. But if the task be 
of too trivial a kind, there will be a serious loss on the total 
progress. 

u The second is, that in order to the exercise of any faculty 
for the acquirement of habit, two particular times should be 
carefully observed : the one when the mind is best disposed, 
the other, when worst disposed to the matter ; so that, by the 
former, we may make most progress on our way ; by the latter, 
we may, by laborious effort, wear out the knots and obstruc- 
tions of the mind, by which means the intermediate times shall 
pass on easily and smoothly. 

"The third precept is that of which Aristotle makes inci- 
dental mention : — 'That we should, with all our strength (yet 
not running into a faulty excess), struggle to the opposite of 
that to which we are by nature the most inclined;' as when we 
row against the current, or bend into an opposite direction a 
crooked staff, in order to straighten it. 

" The fourth precept depends on a general law, of undoubted 
truth, namely, that the mind is led on to anything more suc- 
cessfully and agreeably, if that at which we aim be not the chief 
object in the agent's design, but is accomplished, as it were, by 
doing something else ; since the bias of our nature is such, that 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 215 

HABIT— 

it usually dislikes constraint and rigorous authority. There are 
several other rides which may be given with advantage on the 
government of habit; for habit, if wisely and skilfully formed, 
becomes truly a second nature (as the common saying is) ; but 
unskilfully and unmethodically directed, it will be, as it were, 
the ape of nature, which imitates nothing to the life, but only 
clumsily and awkwardly." 

Bacon, On Advancement of Learning, book vii. 

Maine deBiran, D Influence de Habitude; Dutrochet, Tlieorie 
de V Habitude; M. F. Eavaisson, De V Habitude; Butler, Ana- 
logy, pt. i., ch. 5; Keid. Act. Pow., essay in., pt. i., ch. 3; 
Intell. Pow., essay iv., ch. 4. — V, Custom. 
HAPPINESS i; is not, I think, the most appropriate term for a 
state, the perfection of which consists in the exclusion of all 
hap. that is. chance. 

"Felicity, in its proper sense, is but another word for for- 
tunateness, or happiness ; and I can see no advantage in the 
improper use of words, when proper terms are to be found, but 
on the contrary, much mischief." — Coleridge, Aids to Reflection, 
vol. L, pp. 31-2. 

The Greeks called the suni total of the pleasure which is 
allotted or happens to a man svTvyja,, that is. good hap ; or, 
more religiously, sv^ut/^ouia, that is, favourable providence. — 
Ibid. 

To live well and to act well is synonymous with being happy. 
— Aristotle, Ethic, lib. i., c. 4. 

Happiness is never desired but for its own sake only. Honour, 
pleasure, intelligence, and every virtue are desirable on their 
own account, but they are also desirable as means towards 
happiness. But happiness is never desirable as a means, because 
it is complete and all-sufficient in itself. 

•* Happiness is the object of human action in its most general 
form, as including all other objects, and approved by reason. 
As pleasure is the aim of mere desire, and interest the aim of 
prudence, so happiness is the aim of wisdom. Happin- sa ifl 
conceived as necessarily an ultimate object of action. To be 
happy, includes or supersedes all other gratifications. If we 
arc happy, we do not miss that which we have not ; if we are 



216 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

HAPPINESS— 

not nappy, we want something more, whatever we have. The 
desire of happiness is the supreme desire. All other desires of 
pleasure, wealth, power, fame, are included in this, and are 

subordinate to it. We may make other objects our ultimate 
objects : but we can do so only by identifying them with this. 
Happiness is our being's end and aim. 

•• Since happiness is necessarily the supreme . f our 

desires, and duty the supreme rule of our actions, there can be 
no harmony in our being, except our ha. ineide with 

our duty. That which we contemplate as the ultimate and 
universal object of desire, must be identical with that which we 
contemplate as the ultima supreme guide of our inten- 

tions. As moral beings, our happiness must be found in our 
moral progress, and in the consequences of our moral progress 
we must be happy by being virtuous/' — T\ newell. Morality, 
Xos. bU. 5-15. 

See Aristotle. Ethic, lib. i. : Harris. Dialogue on Happiness. 
—V. Good (Chief). 
HAR^IOM (Pre-established;. — TVhen an impression is made on 
a bodily organ by an external object, the mind becomes per- 
cipient. When a volition is i y the will, the bodily 
organs are r^ady to execute it. How is this brought about? 
The doctrine of a/- re-ei : has reference to this 
question, and may be thus stated. 

Before creating the mind and the body of man. God had a 
perfect knowledge of all ~ :>s uble min Is and of all possible bodies. 
Among this infinite variety of minds and bodies, it was im- 
possible but that there should come together a mind the 
sequence of whose ideas and volitions should correspond with 
the movements of some body : for, in an infinite number of 
possible minds and possible bodies, every combination or union 
was possible. Let us. then, suppose a mind, the order and 
succession of whose modifications corresponded with the series 
of movements to take place in some body. God would unite 
the two and make of them a living soul, a man. Here, then, 
is the most perfect harmony between the two parts of which 
man is composed. There is no commerce nor communication, 
no action and reaction. The mind is an independent force 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 217 

HARMOY- 

which passes from one volition or perception to another, in 
conformity with its own nature ; and would have done so 
although the body had not existed. The body, in like manner, 
by virtue of its own inherent force, and by the single impres- 
sion of external objects, goes through a series of movements ; 
and would have done so although it had not been united to a 
rational soul. But the movements of the body and the modi- 
fications of the mind correspond to each other. In short, the 
mind is a spiritual automaton, and the body is a material auto- 
maton. Like two pieces of clockwork, they are so regulated 
as to mark the same time: but the spring which moves the one 
is not the spring which moves the other; yet they go exactly 
together. The harmony between them existed before the 
mind was united to the body. Hence this is called the doctrine 
of pre-established harmony. 

It may be called correspondence or parallelism, but not 
harmony between mind and body — for there is no unity supe- 
rior to both, and containing both, which is the cause of their 
mutual penetration. In decomposing human personality into 
two substances,* from eternity abandoned each to its proper 
impulse, which acknowledges no superior law in man to direct 
and control tbem, liberty is destroyed. — Tiberghien. Essai des 
Connais. Hum., p. 394. 

The doctrine of pre-established harmony differs from that of 
occasional causes "only in this respect, that by the former the 
accordance of the mental and the bodily phenomena was sup- 
posed to be pre-arranged, once for alb by the Divine Power, 
while by the latter their harmony was supposed to be brought 
about by His constant interposition." — Ferrier, Inst, of 31 eta - 
phys.. p. 478. — V. Causes (Occasional). 

This doctrine was first advocated by Leibnitz in his Theodicee 
an d Mo n a do log ie . 

Bilfinger, JDe Harmonia Prcestabilita, 4to, Tubing., 1740. 
HABHOinr ^of the Spheres). — The ancient philosophers supposed 
that the regular movements of the heavenly bodies throughout 
-pace formed a kind of harmony, which they called the harmony 
of the spheres. 

* Soul and body, however, constitute one supposition or person. 



218 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

HARMONY— 

"Look how the floor of heaven 
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold ; 
There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'St 
But in his motion like an angel sings, 
Still quiring to the young-ey'd cherubim : 
Such harmony is in immortal souls ; 
But, whilst this muddy vesture of decay 
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it." 

Merchant of Venice, Act v., sc. i. 

hat-hei>.--F. Love. 

HEDONISM (vftovv), pleasure), is the doctrine that the chief good 
of man lies in the pursuit of pleasure. This was the doctrine 
of Aristippus and the Cyrenaic school. 

MIBMETIC BOOMS. — A collection of treatises ascribed to the 
Egyptian Thoth or Taaut, and also to the Hermes or Mercury 
of the Greeks. Different opinions have been entertained as to 
their origin and author. Marsilius Ficinus has collected the 
quotations made from the Hermetic books scattered throughout 
the writings of the Platonicians and early Christians ; of which 
he published a Latin translation in 1471. They are a miscellany 
of theosophy, astrology, and alchemy — partly Egyptian, partly 
Greek, and partly Jewish and Christian. — Lenglet du Fresnoy, 
Hist, de la Philosoph. Hermetique, 3 torn., 12mo, Paris, 1742. 

HEURISTIC— V. OSTENSIVE. 

M©lilNESS suggests the idea, not of perfect virtue, but of that 
peculiar affection wherewith a being of perfect virtue regards 
moral evil ; and so much indeed is this the precise and charac- 
teristic import of the term, that, had there been no evil either 
actual or conceivable in the universe, there would have been 
no holiness. There would have been perfect truth and perfect 
righteousness, yet not holiness; for this is a word which denotes 
neither any one of the virtues in particular, nor the assemblage 
of them all put together, but the recoil or the repulsion of these 
towards the opposite vices — a recoil that never would have 
been felt, if vice had been so far a nonentity as to be neither 
an object of real existence nor an object of thought." — Chal- 
mers, Nat Theol., vol. ii., p. 380. 

HOIWlOliOCrUE (opog, same; hoyog). — " A homologue is denned as 
the same organ in different animals, under every variety of 
form and function. Thus, the arms and feet of man, the fore 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 219 

HOMOIiOOUE— 

and hind feet of quadrupeds, the wings and feet of birds, and 
the fins of fishes, are said to be homologous.'''' — M'Cosh, Typical 
Forms, p. 25. 

u The corresponding parts in different animals are called 
homologues, a term first applied to anatomy by the philosophers 
of Germany : and this term Mr. Owen adopts to the exclusion 
of terms more loosely denoting identity or similarity." — Whe- 
well, Supplem. Vol., p. 142. 

See Owen, On the Archetype aud Homologies of the Vertebrate 
Skeleton, 1848. — V. Analogue. 

homonymous.— V. Equivocal. 

HOMOIYPE (6p6s, same ; TV7rog, type). — " The corresponding or 
serially repeated parts in the same animal are called homotypes. 
Thus, the fingers and toes of man, indeed the fore and hind 
limbs of vertebrate animals generally, are said to be liomotypal." 
— M'Cosh, Typical Forms, p. 25. 

HUMOUR (humor, moisture). — As the state of the mind is influ- 
enced by the state of the fluids of the body, humour has come 
to be used as synonymous with temper and disposition. But 
temper and disposition denote a more settled frame- of mind 
than that denoted by the word humour. It is a variable mood 
of the temper or disposition. A man who is naturally of a good 
temper or kind disposition may occasionally be in bad humour. 
— V. Wit. 

HYXOZOISM ("vKyi, matter; and gaq, life). — The doctrine that 
life and matter are inseparable. This doctrine has been held 
under different forms. Straton of Lampsacus held that the 
ultimate particles of matter were each and all of them possessed 
of life. The Stoics, on the other hand, while they did not 
accord activity or life to every distinct particle of matter, held 
that the universe, as a whole, was a being animated by a 
principle which gave to it motion, form, and life. This doc- 
trine appeared among the followers of Plotinus, who held that 
the soul of the universe animated the least particle of matter. 
Spinoza asserted that all things were alive in different degrees. 
Omnia quamvis diversis gradibus animata tamen sunt. 

Under all these forms of the doctrine there is a confounding 
of life with force. Matter, according to Leibnitz and l>o<ec- 



220 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

mnLOZoisui— 

vich, and others, is always endowed with force. Even the vis 
inertice ascribed to it is a force. Attraction and repulsion, and 
chemical affinity, all indicate activity in matter ; but life is a 
force always connected with organization, which much of matter 
wants. Spontaneous motion, growth, nutrition, separation of 
parts, generation, are phenomena which indicate the presence 
of life ; which is obviously not co-extensive with matter. 

HYPOSTASIS.— V. SUBSISTENTIA. 

HYPOTHESIS (vTTohtJiz, suppositio, supposition). — In Logic 
Aristotle gave the name Qkaig to every proposition which, 
without being an axiom, served as the basis of demonstration, 
and did not require to be demonstrated itself. He distinguished 
two kinds of thesis, the one which expressed the essence of a 
thing, and the other which expressed its existence or non- 
existence. The first is the o^ivpog or definition — the second, 
the uTTodeatc, 

When a phenomenon that is new to us cannot be explained 
by any known cause, we are uneasy and try to reconcile it to 
unity by assigning it ad interim to some cause which may 
appear to explain it. Before framing an hypothesis, we must 
see first that [the phenomenon really exists. Prove ghosts 
before explaining them. Put the question an sit ? before cur 
sit f Second, that the phenomenon cannot be explained by any 
known cause. When the necessity of an hypothesis has been 
admitted, a good hypothesis — First, should contain nothing 
contradictory between its own constituent parts or other estab- 
lished truths. The Wernerians suppose water once to have 
held in solution bodies which it cannot now dissolve. The 
Huttonians ascribe no effect to fire but what it can now pro- 
duce. Second, it should fully explain the phenomenon. The 
Copernican system is more satisfactory than that of Tycho 
Brahe. Third, it should simply explain the phenomenon, that 
is, should not depend on any other hypothesis to help it out. 
The Corpernican system is more simple. It needs only gravi- 
tation to carry it out — that of Tycho Brahe depends on several 
things. 

By hypothesis is now understood the supposing of something, 
the existence of which is not proved, as a cause to explain 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOrilY. 221 

II¥POTHE Sis- 
phenomena which have been observed. It thus differs in 
signification from theory, which explains phenomena by causes 
which are known to exist and to operate. u Hypothesis" says 
Dr. Gregory {Lectures on Duties and Qualifications of a 
Physician), u is commonly confounded with theory; but a 
hypothesis properly means the supposition of a principle, of 
whose existence there is no proof from experience, but which 
may be rendered more or less probable by facts which 
are neither numerous enough nor adequate to infer its exis- 
tence." 

" In some instances," says Boscovich (De Solis ac Lunoz 
Befectibus, Lond., 1776, pp. 211, 212), " observations and 
experiments at once reveal to us all we know. In other cases, 
we avail ourselves of the aid of hypothesis; by which word, 
however, is to he understood, not fictions altogether arbitrary, 
but suppositions conformable to experience or analogy." "This," 
says Dr. Brown, u is the right use of hypothesis — not to super- 
sede, but to direct investigation — not as telling us what we are 
to believe, but as pointing out to us what we are to ascertain." 
And it has been said {Pursuit of Knowledge, vol. ii., p. 255, 
weekly vol., No. 31), that u the history of all discoveries that 
have been arrived at, by what can with any propriety be called 
philosophical investigation and induction, attests the necessity 
of the experimenter proceeding in the institution and manage- 
ment of his experiments upon a previous idea of the truth to 
be evolved. This previous idea is what is properly called an 
hypothesis, which means something placed under as a foundation 
or platform on which to institute and carry on the process of 
investigation." 

Different opinions have been held as to the use of hypotheses 
in philosophy. The sum of the matter seems to be, that hypo- 
theses are admissible and may be useful as a means of stimu- 
lating, extending, and directing inquiry. But they ought not 
to be hastily framed, nor fondly upheld in the absence of 
support from facts. They are not to be set up as barriers or 
stopping places in the path of knowledge, but as way-posts to 
guide us in the road of observation, and to cheer us witli the 
prospect of speedily arriving at a resting place — at another 



222 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

HYPOTHESIS— 

stage in our journey towards, truth. They are to be given 
only as provisional explanations of the phenomena, and are to 
be cheerfully abandoned the moment that a more full and 
satisfactory explanation presents itself. — Reid, IntelL Pow., 
essay i., chap. 3. — V. Theory. 

HYPOTHETICAL-7. PROPOSITION, SYLLOGISM. 



I. — V. Ego, Subject. 

IDEA (/Bg#, silos, forma, species, image). — " Plato agreed with 
the rest of the ancient philosophers in this — that all things 
consist of matter and form ; and that the matter of which all 
things were made, existed from eternity, without form; but 
he likewise believed that there are eternal forms of all possible 
things which exist, without matter ; and to those eternal and 
immaterial forms he gave the name of ideas. 

" In the Platonic sense, then, ideas were the patterns accord- 
ing to which the Diety fashioned the phenomenal or ectypal 
world." — Sir William Hamilton. 

The word is used in this sense by Milton when he says : — 

" God saw his works were good, 
Answering his fair idea."" 

And Spenser gives its meaning in the following passage :— « 

" What time this world's great workmaister did cast, 
To make all things such as we now behold, 
It seems that he before his eyes had plast 
A goodly patterne, to whose perfect mould 
He fashioned them as comely as he could, 
That now so fair and seemly they appear, 
As nought may be amended anywhere. 

That wondrous patterne, wheresoe'er it be, 
Whether in earth, laid up in secret store, 
Or else in heaven, that no man may it see 
With sinful eyes, for fear it to defiore, 
Is perfect beauty." 

We are accustomed to say that an artificer contemplating 
the idea of anything, as of a chair or bed, makes a chair or 
bed. But he does not make the<Jdeaio£ -.them. " These fc^ms 
of things," said Cicero {Orap, ; c. 3), " Plato called ideas, and 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 223 

IDEA- 

denied that they were born, but were always contained in 
reason and intelligence." — Heusde, Init. Philosoph. Platon., 
torn, ii., pars, 3. 

" Idea is a bodiless substance, which of itself hath no subsis- 
tence, but giveth form and figure to shapeless matter, and 
becometh the cause that bringeth them into show and evidence. 
Socrates and Plato supposed that there be substances separate 
and distinct from matter, howbeit subsisting in the thoughts 
and imagination of God, that is to say, of mind and under- 
standing. Aristotle admitted verily these forms and ideas, 
howbeit not separate from matter, as being patterns of all that 
God hath made. The Stoics, such at least as were of the school 
of Zeno, have delivered that our thoughts and conceits are the 
ideas." — Plutarch, Opinions of Philosophers, ch. 10, fol. 666 of 
the translation by Holland. 

Idese sunt principales formal qucedam, vel rationes rerum 
stabiles, atque incommutabiles, quce ipsce formatce non sunt, ac 
per hoc ceternce ac semper eodem modo sese habentes, quce in 
divina intelligentia continentur: et cum ipsce ncque oriantur, 
neque intereant; secundum eas tamen formari dicitur, quicquid 
oriri et interire potest, et omne quod oritur et interit." — Augus- 
tine, lib. lxxxiii., 99, 46. 

" Tu cuncta superno 
Ducis ab exemplo, pulchrum pulcherimus ipse 
Mundum mente gerens, similique imagine formans."— 

Boeth., De Consol, 9. 

Tiberghien (Essai des Connaiss. Hum., p. 207) has said, — 
u Seneca considered ideas, according to Plato, as the eternal 
exemplars of things, Cicero as their form, Diogenes Laertius 
as their cause and principle^ Aristotle as substances; and in 
the middle ages and in our day they are genercd notions, in 
opposition to particular or individual notions. The ideas of 
Plato embrace all these meanings. The terms which he em- 
ploys are iliot, and tllog to designate the Divine image, the ideal 
model or type (tv7tq;) of all things and beings. He also calls 
them TrotQotlsiy/^otroi, uirica do^ocl, to denote that these eternal 
exemplars are the principle and cause of the existence and de- 
velopment of all that is in nature. They are also the thoughts 



224 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

If>EA— 

of God (v ov) p oc to), wlio has produced all things according to 
the type of these ideas. And the terms kvuheg, povaftes, indicate 
the affinity between the theory of Plato and the numbers of 
Pythagoras." 

In another passage (Essai des Connais. Hum., pp. 33, 34) the 
same author has said, that, " according to the Platonic sense, 
adopted by Kant and Cousin, ideas are as it were the essence 
and matter of our intelligence. They are not as such, a product 
or result of intelligence, they are its primitive elements, and at 

the same time the immediate object of its activity 

They are the primary anticipations which the mind brings to 
all its cognitions, the principles and laws by reason of which it 
conceives of beings and things. The mind does not create 

ideas, it creates by means of ideas There are two 

great classes of ideas — 1. Those which are related in some 
sense to experience ; as the principles of mathematics, notions 
of figure, magnitude, extension, number, time, and space. 2. 
Those which are completely independent of all sensible repre- 
sentation, as the ideas of good and evil, just and unjust, true 
or false, fair or deformed." — p. 208. — V. Notion. 

According to Plato, ideas were the only objects of science 
or true knowledge. Things created being in a state of con- 
tinual flux, there can be no real knowledge with respect to 
them. But the divine ideas being eternal and unchangeable, 
are objects of science properly so called. According to Aris- 
totle and the Peripatetics, knowledge, instead of originating or 
consisting in the contemplation of the eternal ideas, types, or 
forms, according to which all things were created, originated, 
and consisted in the contemplation of the things created, and 
in the thoughts and the operations of mind to which that con- 
templation gives rise. But as external things cannot them- 
selves be in the mind, they are made known to it by means of 
species, images, or phantasms (q. v.) ; so that, in perception, we 
are not directly cognizant of the object, but only of a repre- 
sentation of it. In like manner, in imagination, memory, and 
the operations of intellect, what is directly present to the mind 
is not the real object of thought, but a representation of it. 

Instead of employing the various terms image, species, phan- 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

IDEA— 

tasm, &c, of the Peripatetic philosophy, Descartes adopted 
the term idea, which till his time had been all but exclusively 
employed in its Platonic sense. 

By Descartes and subsequent philosophers the term idea was 
employed to signify all our mental representations, all the 
notions which the mind frames of things. And this, in contra- 
distinction to the Platonic, may be called the modern use of 
the word. Mr. Locke, for example, who uses the word idea 
so frequently as to think it necessary to make an apology for 
doing so, says — "It is the term which, I think, serves best to 
stand for whatsoever is the object of the understanding, when 
a man thinks : I have used it to express whatever is meant by 
phantasm, notion, species, or whatever it is which the mind 
can be employed about in thinking." 

Against this modern use of the word idea, more especially 
in reference to the doctrine of perception (q. r.). Dr. Eeid 
most vehemently protested. — " Modern philosophers." said he 
(IntelL Poic, essay i., chap. 1), "as well as the Peripatetics 
and Epicureans of old, have conceived that external objects 
cannot be the immediate objects of our thoughts ; that there 
must be some image of them in the mind itself, in which, as in 
a mirror, they are seen. And the name idea, in the philoso- 
phical sense of it, is given to those internal and immediate 
objects of our thoughts. The external thing is the remote or 
mediate object ; but the idea, or image of that object in the 
mind, is the immediate object, without which we would have 
no perception, no remembrance, no conception of the mediate 
object. 

u When, therefore, in common language, we speak of having 
an idea of anything, we mean no more by that expression than 
thinking of it. The vulgar allow that this expression implies a 
mind that thinks, an act of that mind which we call thinking. 
and an object about which we think. But besides these three, 
the philosopher conceives that there is a fourth ; to wit, the idea 
which is the immediate object. The idea is in the mind itself, 
and can have no existence but in a mind that thinks ; but the 
remote or mediate object may be something external, as the 
sun or moon : it may be something past or future : it may be 
Q 



226 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

H>EA— - 

something which never existed. This is the philosophical 
meaning of the word idea: and we may observe that this 
meaning of the word is built upon a philosophical opinion ; 
for if philosophers had not believed that there are such imme- 
diate objects of all our thoughts in the mind, they would never 
have used the word idea to express them. 

" I shall only add that, although I may have occasion to use 
the word idea in this philosophical sense in explaining the 
opinions of others, I shall have no occasion to use it in express- 
ing my own, because I believe ideas, taken in this sense, to be 
a mere fiction of philosophers. And in the popular meaning 
of the word, there is the less occasion to use it, because the 
English words thought, notion, apprehension, answer the purpose 
as well as the Greek word idea ; with this advantage, that they 
are less ambiguous." 

Now it may be doubted whether in this passage Dr. Keid 
has correctly understood and explained the meaning of the 
word idea as employed by all modern philosophers, from the 
time of Descartes. 

Dr. Reid takes idea to mean something interposed between 
the mind and the object of its thought — a tertium quid, or a 
quartum quid, an independent entity different from the mind 
and from the object thought of. Now this has been the 
opinion both of ancient and modern philosophers ; but it is not 
the opinion of all. There are many, especially among modern 
philosophers, who, by the idea of a thing, mean the thing itself 
in the mind as an object of thought. Even when the object 
thought of is represented to the mind, the representation is a 
modification of the mind itself, and the act of representing and 
the act of knowing the object thought of, are one and the 
same ; the representation and cognition are indivisible. But 
Dr. Reid does not admit that any of our knowledge is repre- 
sentative. He had such a horror of the doctrine of ideas as 
meaning something interposed between the mind and the 
objects of its knowledge, that he calls all our knowledge im- 
mediate. Thus he speaks of an immediate knowledge of things 
past, and of an immediate knowledge of things future. Now 
all knowledge is present knowledge, that is, it is only know- 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. '12" 

IDEA— 

ledge when we have it. But all knowledge is not immediate 
knowledge. Things that are past are not actually present to 
the mind when we remember them. Things that are future 
are not actually present when we anticipate them, for they 
have as yet no actual existence. But the mind frames to itself 
a representation of these things as they have been, or as they 
will be. and in thus representing them has knowledge of them. 
This knowledge, however, cannot be called immediate. In 
memory there is the faculty, and there is the object of the 
faculty or the thing remembered. But the object or the thing 
remembered is not actually present to the faculty. It is repro- 
duced or represented, and in representing the object to the 
faculty we have knowledge of it as a past reality. Memory, 
therefore, may be called a representative faculty. Xow. in 
perception, where the object of the faculty is also present, it 
may not be necessary for the mind to frame to itself any repre- 
sentation or image of the external reality. The faculty and its 
object are in direct contact, and the knowledge or perception 
is the immediate result. This is the doctrine of Dr. Reid, and 
if he had acknowledged the distinction, he might have called 
perception a presentative faculty, as memory is a representa- 
tive faculty.* According to other philosophers, however, there 
is a representation even in perception. The external reality is 
not in the mind. The mind merely frames to itself a repre- 
sentation or image of what the external reality is. and in this 
way has knowledge of it. But this representation or image is 
not something interposed or different from the mind and the 
external object. It is a modification of the mind itself. It is 
the external object in the mind as an object of thought. It is 
the idea of the external reality. This is a theory of perception 
which Dr. Eeicl did not clearly distinguish ; but it is at variance 
with his own. and. if he had distinctly apprehended it, he would 
have condemned it. In like manner he would have condemned 
the use of the word idea to denote a representative image, 
even although that representation was held to be merely a 

• See Re Ms Worls, edited by Sir \Viniam Hamilton ; Xote b. Of Presentative and 
Representative Knowledge ; and Note c, Of the Various Theories of External Per- 
ception. 



228 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

IDEA- 

modification of mind. But this is the sense in which the term 
idea is used by Descartes, and other philosophers, in reference 
to the doctrine of perception. In a general sense it means 
anything present to the mind, whether really or representa- 
tively, as an object of thought.* 

Ideas, regarded according to the nature and diversity of 
their objects, are sensible, intellectual, or moral; according to 
the essential characters of these objects, they are necessary and 
absolute, or contingent and relative; according to the aspect in 
which they represent things, they are simple or compound^ 
abstract or concrete, individual or general, partitive or collec- 
tive ; according to their origin or formation, they are adventi- 
tious, factitious, or innate ; according to their quality or fidelity, 
they are true or false, real or imaginary, clear or obscure, 
distinct or confused, complete or incomplete, adequate or inade- 
quate. — Leibnitz, Nouveaux Essais, b. ii., ch. 22. 

As to the origin of our ideas, the opinions of metaphysicians 
may be divided into three classes. 1. Those who deny the 
senses to be anything more than instruments conveying objects 
to the mind, perception being active (Plato and others). 2. 
Those who attribute all our ideas to sense (Hobbes, Gassendi, 
Condillac, the ancient Sophists). 3. Those who admit that 
the earliest notions proceed from the senses, yet maintain that 
they are not adequate to produce the whole knowledge possessed 
by the human understanding (Aristotle, Locke). — Dr. Mill, 
Essays, 314, 321.— V. Innate. 

See Trendlenburg, De Ideis Platonis; Bichter, De Ideis 
Platonis ; Sir William Hamilton, Discussions on Philosophy; 
Reid^s Vforks; Dugald Stewart, Philosophy Essays, Appendix 
ii. ; Adam Smith, Essays on Philosoph. Subjects, p. 119, note. , 
ideal. — u Though ideas are widely separated from sensible 
reality, there is something, if possible, still more widely sepa- 
rated, and that is the ideal. A few examples will enable you 
to comprehend the difference between ideas and the ideal : 

* Dr. Currie once, upon being bored by a foolish blue, to tell her the precise meaning 
of the word idea (which she said she had been reading about in some metaphysical 
work, but could not understand), answered, at last, angrily, u ldea i madam, is the fem- 
inine of idiot, and means a female fool."— Moore, Diary, vol. iv., p. 38. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 229 

IDEAL.— 

Perfection is an idea ; humanity in all its perfection is an ideal; 
hinnan virtue and wisdom in all their purity are ideas ; the 
wisdom of the Stoics is an ideal. The ideal, then, is the intel- 
lectual existence of a thing which has no other characters than 
those determined by the idea itself. The idea, thus individual- 
ized, so to speak, serves as the rule of our actions : it is a 
model, which we may approach in a greater or lesser degree, 
but from which we are nevertheless infinitely distant. We 
compare, for example, our conduct with the dictates of the 
monitor, that exists within us. We all judge and correct our- 
selves with reference to this ideal, without the power of ever 
attaining to its perfection. These ideas, though destitute of 
any objective reality, cannot be regarded as purely chimerical. 
They furnish a unit of measure to the reason, which requires a 
conception of what is perfect in each kind, in order to appre- 
ciate and measure the various degrees of imperfection. But 
would you realize the ideal in experience as the hero of a 
romance ? It is impossible, and is, besides, a senseless and 
useless enterprise ; for the imperfection of our nature, which 
ever belies the perfection of the idea, renders all illusion im- 
possible, and makes the good itself, as contemplated in the 
idea, resemble a fiction.'* — Henderson, The Philosophy of Kant. 
p. 119. 

" By ideal I understand the idea, not in concrete but in 
individuo, as an individual thing, determinable or determined by 
the idea alone. What I have termed an ideal, was in Plato's 
philosophy an idea of the Divine mind — an individual object 
present to its pure intuition, the most perfect of every kind of 
possible beings, and the archetype of all phenomenal exis- 
tences." — Meiklejolm. Translation of Kanfs Crit. of Pure 
Reason, p. 351. 

"We call attention," says Cousin (On the Beautiful), "to 
two words which continually recur in this discussion — they are. 
on the one hand, nature or experience ; on the other, ideal. 
Experience is individual or collective ; but the collective is 
resolved into the individual ; the ideal is opposed to the indi- 
vidual and to collectiveness : it appears as an original concep- 
tion of the mind. Nature or experience give- me the occasion 



230 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

H>EA1,— 

for conceiving the ideal, but the ideal is something entirely 
different from experience or nature ; so that, if we apply it to 
natural, or even to artificial figures, they cannot fill up the 
condition of the ideal conception, and we are obliged to imagine 
them exact. The word ideal corresponds to an absolute and 
independent idea, and not to a collective one." 

" L'ideal, voila l'echelle mysterieuse qui fait monter l'ame du 
fini, a rinfini." — Cousin, Du Vrai, du Beau, et du Bien, 9me. 
lecon, p. 189. 

When the word ideal is used as a noun and qualified by the 
adjective beau, its sense is critical or assthetic, and has reference 
to the fine arts, especially to statuary and painting. u The 
common notion of the ideal as exemplified more especially 
in the painting of the last century, degrades it into a mere 
abstraction. It was assumed that to raise an object into an 
ideal, you must get rid of everything individual about it. 
Whereas the true ideal is the individual freed from everything 
that is not individual in it, with all its parts pervaded, and 
animated, and harmonized by the spirit of life which flows from 
the centre." — Guesses at Truth, second series, p. 218. 

The ideal is to be attained by selecting and assembling in 
one whole the beauties and perfections which are usually seen 
in different individuals, excluding everything defective or 
unseemly, so as to form a type or model of the species. Thus, 
the Apollo Belvedere is the ideal of the beauty and proportion 
of the human frame ; the Farnese Hercules is the type of manly 
strength. The ideal can only be attained by following nature. 
There must be no elements nor combinations but such as nature 
exhibits ; but the elements of beauty and perfection must be 
disengaged from individuals, and embodied in one faultless 
whole. This is the empirical account of the ideal. 

According to Cicero {Orator., c. 2, 3), there is nothing of 
any kind so fair that there may not be a fairer conceived by the 
mind. " We can conceive of statues more perfect than those 
of Phidias. Nor did the artist, when he made the statue of 
Jupiter or Minerva, contemplate any one individual from 
which to take a likeness ; but there was in his mind a form of 
beauty, gazing on which, he guided his hand and skill in 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 231 

IDEAL- 

imitation of it." In the philosophy of Plato this form was 
called Toipo:'hsty l uoc. Seneca (Epist. lviii., sect. 15-18) takes 
the distinction between ifax and ilia:, thus: — when a painter 
paints a likeness, the original is his fie ex. — the likeness is the 
sTbog or image. The eUog is in the work — the lUoc is out of the 
work and before the work. This distinction is commended by 
Heusde (Init. Phil. Plat., vol. ii., pars. 3, p. 105). And he 
refers to Cicero {JDe Invent., ii., 1), who states that Zeuxis 
had five of the most beautiful women of Crotona, as models, 
from which to make up his picture of a perfect beauty, as 
illustrating the Platonic sense of 7rotpahiyu,oi or the ideal. 
According to this view, the beau ideal is a type of hypothetical 
perfection contemplated by the mind, but which may never 
have been realized, how nearly soever it may have been 
approached in the shape of an actual specimen. 
IDEAMSUI is the doctrine that in external perceptions the 
objects immediately known are ideas. It has been held 
under various forms. — See Sir W. Hamilton, Reid's Works, 
note c ; Berkeley, Works ; Sir W. Drummond, Academic 
Questions; Reid, Inquiry. 

Some of the phases of modern idealism among the Germans, 
may be seen in the following passage from Lewes, Biograph. 
Hist, of Phil., vol. iv., p. 209 : — u Isee a tree. The common 
psychologists tell me that there are three things implied in 
this one fact of vision, viz, : a tree, an image of that tree, 
and a mind which apprehends that image. Fichte tells me 
that it is I alone who exist. The tree and the image of it 
are one thing, and that is a modification of my mind. This is 
subjective idealism. Schelling tells me that both the tree and 
my ego (or self), are existences equally real or ideal ; but they 
are nothing less than manifestations of the absolute, the in- 
finite, or unconditioned. This is objective idealism. But Hegel 
tells me that all these explanations are false. The only thing 
really existing (in this one fact of vision) is the idea, the 
relation. The ego and the tree are but two terms of the 
relation, and owe their reality to it. This is absolute idealism. 
According to this there is neither mind nor mat tor, heaven 
nor earth, God nor man. — V. Xiiiilism. The only real exis- 



232 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

IDEALISM-— 

tences are certain ideas or relations. Everything else that 
has name or being derives its name and being from its consti- 
tuting one or other of the two related terms, subject and 
object ; but the only thing that is true or real is the identity 
of their contradiction, that is, the relation itself." 

The doctrine opposed to idealism is realism— q. v. See also 
Perception. 

IDEALIST. — u In England, the word idealist is most commonly 
restricted to such as (with Berkeley) reject the existence of a 
material world. Of late its meaning has been sometimes 
extended (particularly since the publication of Keid) to all 
those who retain the theory of Descartes and Locke, concern- 
ing the immediate objects of our perceptions and thoughts, 
whether they admit or reject the consequences deduced from 
this theory by the Berkeleian. In the present state of the 
science, it would contribute much to the distinctness of our 
reasonings were it to be used in this last sense exclusively.' T 
— Stewart, Dissert., part ii., 166, note. 

IDEATION and IDEATIONAL,.— 14 The term sensation has a 
double meaning. It signifies not only an individual sensation, 
as, when I say, I smell this rose, or I look at my hand ; but 
it also signifies the general faculty of sensation ; that is, the 
complex notion of all the phenomena together, as a part of 
our nature." 

u The word idea has only the meaning which corresponds to 
the first of these significations ; it denotes an individual idea ; 
and we have not a name for that complex notion which 
embraces, as one whole, all the different phenomena to which 
the term idea relates. As we say sensation, we might also 
say ideation ; it would be a very useful word ; and there is no 
objection to it, except the pedantic habit of decrying a new 
term. Sensation would, in that case, be the general name for 
one part of our constitution ; ideation for another." 

Quoting this from Mr. James Mill as his authority, Dr. 
Carpenter (Princip. of Hum. Phys., p. 546), has introduced 
the adjective ideational to express a state of consciousness 
which is excited by a sensation through the instrumentality 
of the sensorium. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 233 

IDEATION- 

" The basement convolutions of the cerebrum are the central 
organs of the perceptive consciousness, the portals to intel- 
lectual action, where sensory impressions, the intuitions of 
the special senses, whether sights, sounds, tastes, smells, or 
feelings become idealized and; registered; that is, perceived, 
remembered, and associated; and where, too, the ideation of 
outward individualities is effected. . . . Ideation is the 
first step in the intellectual progress of man. Ideas are the 
pabula of thought, and form equally a constituent element in 
the composite nature of our animal propensities, and of our 
emotional and moral feelings. Ideation is as essential to the 
very existence of memory, as memory is to the operation of 
thought. For what, in reality, is memory but the fact of 
retained idealized impressions in the mind ? And without these 
retained idealizations, embodied in the memory as repre- 
sentative ideas, where are the materials of thought ? and 
how are the processes of thought to be effected ? " — Journal of 
Psychol Med., Jan., 1857, pp. 139, 144. 

lOENTiCAli PROPOSITION.-" It is Locke, I believe, who 
introduced, or at least gave currency to the expression 
identical proposition, in philosophic language. It signifies a 
judgment, a proposition, in which an idea is affirmed by 
itself, or in which we affirm of a thing what we already know 
of it." — Cousin, Hist, of Mod. Philosophy lect. xxiv. ; Locke, 
Essay on Hum. Understand., book iv., chap. 8, sect. 3. 

We must distinguish between analytic and tautologous judg- 
ments. Whilst the analytic display the meaning of the subject, 
and put the same matter in a new form, the tautologous only 
repeat the subject, and give us the same matter, in the same 
form, as, " Whatever is, is." — Thomson, Outline of Laws of 
Thought, p. 196. 

A proposition is called identical whenever the attribute is 
contained in the subject, so that the subject cannot be con- 
ceived as not containing the attribute. Thus, when you say a 
body is solid, I say that you make an identical proposition, 
because it is impossible to have the idea of body without that 
of solidity. 

iDENTlSJff or iojejvtitk" (idem, the same), or the doctrine 



234 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

IDENTISJtt- 

of absolute identity, teaches that the two elements of thought, 
objective and subjective, are absolutely one ; that matter and 
mind are opposite poles of the same infinite substance ; and 
that creation and the Creator are one. This is the philo- 
sophy of Schelling. It coincides ultimately with Pantheism — 
q. v. 

" If the doctrine of identity means anything, it means that 
thought and being are essentially one ; that the process of 
thinking is virtually the same as the process of creating ; that 
in constructing the universe by logical deduction, we do 
virtually the same thing as Deity accomplished in developing 
himself in all the forms and regions of creation ; that every 
man's reason, therefore, is really God ; in fine, that Deity is 
the whole sum of consciousness immanent in the world." — 
Morell, Hist, of Phil. , vol. ii., p. 127. 

IDENTITY means sameness. Unity is opposed to division, iden- 
tity to distinction. A thing is one when it is not divided 
into others. A thing is the same when it is not distinguish- 
able from others, whether it be divided from them or not. 
Unity denies the divisibleness of a thing in itself. Identity 
denies the divisibleness of a thing from itself, or from that 
with which it is said to be the same. It is unity with per- 
sistence and continuity ; unity perceived even in plurality ; 
in multiplicity and succession, in diversity and change. It is 
the essential characteristic of all substance or being, that it is 
one and endures. 

Unorganized matter may be said to have identity in the 
persistence of the parts or molecules of which it consists. 
Organized bodies have identity so long as organization and life 
remain. An oak, which from a small plant becomes a great 
tree, is still the same tree. — Locke, Essay on Hum. Under- 
stand., book ii., ch. 27, sect. 3. 

IDENTITY (Personal). — " What is called personal identity, is 
our being the same persons from the commencement to the 
end of life ; while the matter of the body, the dispositions, 
habits, and thoughts of the mind, are continually changing. 
We feel and know that we are the same. This notion or 
persuasion of personal identity results from memory. If a 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 23d 

IDEMITr- 

man loses all recollection of his early life, he continues, 
nevertheless, actually the same person." — Taylor, Elements 
of T 

Dr. Brown (Lecture xi.) changes the phrase -personal identity 
into menial identity. Locke says {Essay on Hum. Under- 
stand., book ii.. ch. 27) — ; - To find wherein person al identity 
consists we must consider what person stands for; which, I 
think, is a thinking intelligent being, that has reason and 
retlection. and can consider itself as itself, the same thinking 
thing in different times and places." 

This looks like confining personal identity to the mind. But 
Leibnitz (Theodicee, p. 172) called it a " metaphysical com- 
munication by which soul and body make up one supposi- 
tion, which we call a person." In a Review of the Doctrine of 
Personal Identity, p. 73, 8vo, London, 1827, it has been pro- 
posed to define it as " the continuation of the same organiza- 
tion of animal life in a human creature possessing an intelli- 
gent mind, that is, one endowed with the ordinary faculties 
of reason and memory, without reference to the original for- 
mation or constitution of that mind, whether it be material 
or immaterial, or whether it survives or perishes with the body. 
Or. more shortly, it may be said personal identity consists in 
the same thinking intelligent substance united to the same 
human body. By the same human body, however, is not 
meant the same particles of matter, but of the same human 
structure and form." — V. Pppsoxapppy. 

Locke makes personal identify consist in consciousness. " Con- 
3 is inseparable from thinking ; and since it is so, and 
is that which makes ever}* one to be what he calls self and 
thereby distinguishes himself from all other thinking beings, in 
this alone consists personal identity, i. e., the sameness of a 
rational being. And as far as this consciousness can be ex- 
tended backwards to any past action or thought, so far reaches 
the identity of that person." — Essay on Hum. Understand.. 
book ii.. eh. 27. 

But it has been remarked that •'Consciousness, without any 
regard to a sameness of the thinking intelligent substance, 
cannot constitute personal identity. For, then, a disordered 



236 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

IDENTITY— 

imagination might make one man become two, or even twenty 
persons, whose actions he should imagine himself to have per- 
formed. And if a man forgets and loses all consciousness of 
having done certain actions, he will then not be the same 
person who did them." — Whitehead, On Materialism, p. 79. 

Consciousness merely ascertains or indicates personal identity. 
but does not constitute it. Consciousness presupposes personal 
identity as knowledge presupposes truth. 

See Butler, Dissertation on Personal Identity ; Reid, Intell. 
Pow., essay iii., ch. 6, with note; Stewart, Elements, part ii., 
ch. 1, sect. 2. 

IDENTITY (Principle of). — It is usually expressed thus — a thing 
is what it is, and not another. So that it amounts to the same 
as the principle of contradiction — q. v. In Logic it is expressed 
thus — conceptions which agree can be in thought united, or 
affirmed of the same subject at the same time. 

IDEOLOGY or IBEALOGY The analysis of the human mind 

by Destutt de Tracy, published about the end of last century, 
was entitled u Elemens d^Ideologie," and the word has come to 
be applied to the philosophy of the sensational school, or the 
followers of Condillac — as Cabanis, Garat, and Volney. Of 
this school, De Tracy is the metaphysician ; Cabanis (Rapports 
du Physique et de Moral de V Homme) is the physiologist; and 
Yolney (Catechism du Citoyen Francais) is the moralist. The 
followers of this school were leading members of the Academie 
des Sciences Morales et Politiques, and also took an active share 
in political assemblies. Their doctrines and movements were 
contrary to the views of Napoleon, who showed his dislike by 
suppressing the Academie des Sciences Morales et Politiques. 
But the members of the school kept up their doctrines and 
their meetings, and it was on the motion of De Tracy that the 
Senate decreed the abdication of the emperor in 1814. — Da- 
miron, Hist, de Philosoph. en France au 19 siecle. 

u For Locke and his whole school, the study of the under- 
standing is the study of ideas ; hence the recent and celebrated 
expression ideology, to designate the science of the human 
understanding. The source of this expression is in the Essay 
on the Hum. Understanding, and the ideological school is the 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 237 

IDEOLOGY- 

natural offspring of Locke." — Cousin, Hist, of Mod. Philosophy 
lect. 16. 

"By a double blunder in philosophy and Greek, ideologic 
(for idealogie), a word which could only properly suggest an a 
priori scheme, deducing our knowledge from the intellect, has 
in France become the name peculiarly distinctive of that philo- 
sophy of mind which exclusively derives our knowledge from 
sensation." — Sir W. Hamilton, Edin. Rev., Oct., 1830, p. 112. 
" Destutt de Tracy has distinguished Condillac by the title 
of the father of ideology.'' — Stewart, Philosoph. Essays, essay iii. 
IDIOSYNCRASY (fbiog, proj)rius ; ifvp, con, and koZgis, mixtio), 
means a peculiar temperament of mind or of body. u The soul 
in its first and pure nature hath no idiosyncrasies, that is, hath 
no proper natural inclinations, which are not competent to 
others of the same kind and condition." — Glanvill, Pre- existence 
of Souls, c. 10. It is seen, however, that different persons " of 
the same kind and condition " may soon manifest different 
inclinations — which if not natural are partly so, and are traced 
to some peculiarity hi their temperament, as well as to the 
effect of circumstances. 

Sir Thomas Browne {Vulgar Errors, book hi., chap. 28), 
asks, " Whether quails from any idiosyncrasy or peculiarity of 
constitution do invariably feed upon hellebore, or rather some- 
times but medically use the same?" In like manner some men 
are violently affected by honey and coffee, which have no such 
effects on others. This is bodily idiosyncrasy. Sympathy and 
antipathy — q. v., when peculiar, maybe traced to idiosyncrasy. 
Mr. Stewart in the conclusion of part second of his Element*. 
says he uses temperament as synonymous with idiosyncrasy. — 
V. Temperament. 
IDOL. (s/'o&Aoy, from sl^og, an image). — Something set up in place 
of the true and the real. Hence Lord Bacon (De Augment. 
Scient., lib. iv., cap. 5) calls those false appearances by which 
men are led into error, idols. ,; I do find, therefore, in 
this enchanted glass four idols, or false appearances, of several 
distinct sorts, every sort comprehending many subdivisions : 
the first sort I call idols of the nation or tribe ; the second, 
idols of the den or cave; the third, idols of the forum; and 



238 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

11>©I,— 

the fourth, idols of the theatre." — I)e Interpretations Natural, 
sect. 39; Reid, Intell. Pow,, essay iv., chap. 8. — V. Preju- 
dice. 
iCrNOKANCE, in morals and jurisprudence, may respect the law 
or the action, and is distinguished into ignorantia juris, and 
ignorantia facti. 

Ignorantia facti excusat. Ignorance of what is done excuses, 
as, when a contract is signed under a wrong impression as to 
the meaning of the terms, such contract is voidable. 

Ignorantia juris quod quisque tenetur scive neminem excusat. 
Every man is supposed to know the laws of the land in which 
he lives ; and if he transgress any of them, although in ignorance, 
he is not excused. A merchant continuing to deal in goods 
which have been declared contraband is liable to the penalty, 
though he did not know the law. 

In respect of an action, ignorance is called efficacious or con- 
comitant, according as the removal* of it would, or would not, 
prevent the action from being done. In respect of the agent, 
ignorance is said to be vincible or invincible, according as it 
can, or cannot, be removed by the use of accessible means of 
knowledge. 

Vincible ignorance is distinguished into affected or wilful, by 
which the means of knowing are perversely rejected ; and 
supine or crass, by which the means of knowing are indolently 
or stupidly neglected. 

Ignorance is said to be invincible in two ways — in itself, and 
also in its cause, as when a man knows not what he does, 
through disease of body or of mind ; in itself, but not in its 
cause, as when a man knows not whafc he does, through intoxi- 
cation or passion. 
IXIiATlON (illatum, from infero, to bring in), or u inference 
consists in nothing but the perception of the connection there 
is between the ideas in each step of the deduction, whereby 
the mind comes to see either the certain agreement or disagree- 
ment of any two ideas, as in demonstration, in which it arrives 

* Aristotle (Ethic, lib. iii., cap. Intakes a difference between an action done through 
ignorance (ptcc, ayvoioiy), and an action done ignorantly (kyvbwv). In the former case 
the ignorance is the direct cause of the action, in the latter case it is an accident or 
concomitant. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 239 

II^ATION— 

at knowledge ; or their probable connection on which it 
withholds its assent, as in opinion." — Locke, Essay on Hum. 
Understand., b. iv., c. 17. — V. Inference, Induction?. 

IliljUMIlVATI (illumino, to enlighten). — The name given to a 
secret society said to exist in Germany and other countries of 
Europe, towards the close of the last century. They professed 
the purest principles of virtue ; but their real design was to 
subvert all religion and all government. Doubts have been 
entertained as to the extent and influence of any such society ; 
and some have even denied its existence. — Robison, Proofs of 
a Conspiracy, Sfc. 

IMAGINATION. — " Nihil aliud est imaginari quam rei eorporese 
figuram seu imaginem contemplari." — Descartes, Medit. Se- 
cnnda. 

Mr. Addison says {Spectator, No. 411), u The pleasures of 
imagination are such as arise from visible objects, since it is the 
sense of sight that furnishes the imagination with its ideas." 
Dr. Reid says, "Imagination, in its proper sense, signifies a 
lively conception of objects of sight. It is distinguished from 
conception, as a part from a whole." But a much wider signi- 
fication has been given to the word by others. 

u By imagination we mean, in a comprehensive sense, that 
operation of the mind by which it — (1) receives, (2) retains, (3) 
recalls, and (4) combines, according to higher laws the ideal 
images furnished to it by the csenesthesis and by the senses ; 
for all these acts are manifestly links of one chain. At the first 
step, we usually call this operation* the faculty of conception ; 
at the second, memory ; at the third, reproductive fancy ; and 
at the fourth, productive fancy." — Feuchtersleben, Med. 
Psychol, p. 120. 8vo, 1847. 

"In the language of modern philosophy, the word imagina- 
tion seems to denote — first, the power of apprehending or con- 
ceiving ideas, simply as they are in themselves, without any 
view to their reality ; secondly, the power of combining into 
new forms or assemblages, those thoughts, ideas, or notions, 

* "It would be well, if instead of speaking of the powers of the mind (which causes a 
misunderstanding), we adhere to the designation of the several operations of one mind; 
which most psychologists recommend, hut in the sequel forget." 



240 ' VOCABULARY OF FHILOSOPHY. 

IMAGINATION— 

which we have derived from experience or from information. 
These two powers, though distinguishable, are not essentially 
different." — Beattie, Dissert., Of Imagination, chap. 1. 

u Imagination as reproductive, stores the mind with ideal 
images, constructed through the medium of attention and 
memory, out of our immediate perceptions. These images, 
when laid up in the mind, form types with which we can com- 
pare any new phenomena we meet with, and which help us to 
begin the important work of reducing our experience to some 
appreciable degree of unity. 

u To understand the nature of productive or creative imagina- 
tion, we must suppose the reproductive process to be already 
in full operation, that is, we must suppose a number of ideas to 

be already formed and stored up within the mind 

They may now be combined together so as to form new images, 
which, though composed of the elements given in the original 
representations, yet are now purely mental creations of our 
own. Thus, I may have an image of a rock in my mind, and 
another image of a diamond. I combine these two together 
and create the purely ideal representation of a diamond rock." 
— Morell, Psychol, pp. 175, 176. 8vo, Lond., 1853. 
IMAGINATION and FANCY. — u A man has imagination in pro- 
portion as he can distinctly copy in idea the impressions of 
sense ; it is the faculty which images within the mind the phe- 
nomena of sensation. A man has fancy in proportion as he 
can call up, connect, or associate at pleasure, these internal 
images (Qavrafa, is to cause to appear) so as to complete ideal 
representations of absent objects. Imagination is the power of 
depicting, and fancy, of evoking or combining. The imagina- 
tion is formed by patient observation ; the fancy, by a voluntary 
activity in shifting the scenery of the mind. The more accurate 
the imagination, the more safely may a painter, or a poet, 
undertake a delineation or description, without the presence of 
the objects to be characterized. The more versatile the fancy, 
the more original and striking will be the decorations pro- 
duced." — Taylor, Synonyms, 

Wordsworth (Preface to his Works, vol. i., 12mo, Lond., 
1836) finds fault with the foregoing discrimination, and says, 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 241 

IMAGINATION— 

"It is not easy to find how imagination thus explained, differs 
from distinct remembrance of images ; or fancy, from quick 
and vivid recollection of them : each is nothing more than a 
mode of memory." According to Wordsworth, u imagination, 
in the sense of the poet, has no reference to images that are 
merely a faithful copy, existing in the mind, of absent external 
objects ; but is a word of higher import, denoting operations 
of the mind upon these objects, and processes of creation or 
composition governed by fixed laws." 

" It is the divine attribute of the imagination, that it is irre- 
pressible, unconfinable ; that when the real world is shut out, 
it can create a world for itself, and with a necromantic power, 
can conjure up glorious shapes and forms, and brilliant visions 
to make solitude populous, and irradiate the gloom of the 
dungeon." — W. Irving, Sketch Book. 

M And as imagination bodies forth 
The form of things unknown, the poet's pen 
Turns them to shapes, and gives to nothing 
A local habitation and a name." 

To imagine in this high and true sense of the word, is to 
realize the ideal, to make intelligible truths descend into the 
forms of sensible nature, to represent the invisible by the 
visible, the infinite by the finite. In this view of it, imagina- 
tion may be regarded as the differentia of man — the distinctive 
mark which separates him a grege mutorum. That the inferior 
animals have memory, and what has been called passive ima- 
gination, is proved by the fact that they dream — and that in 
this state the sensuous impressions made on them during their 
waking hours, are reproduced. But they show no trace of that 
higher faculty or function which transcends the sphere of sense, 
and which out of elements supplied by things seen and temporal, 
can create new objects, the contemplation of which lifts us to 
the infinite and the unseen, and gives us thoughts which wander 
through eternity. High art is highly metaphysical, and whether 
it be in poetry or music, in painting or in sculpture, the triumph 
of the artist lies not in presenting us with an exact transcript 
of things that may be seen, or heard, or handled in the world 
around us, but in carrying us across the gulf which separates 



242 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

IMAOINATION- 

the phenomenal from the real, and placing us in the presence 
of the truly beautiful, and surrounding us with an atmosphere 
more pure than that which the sun enlightens. 

IMAGINATION and conception. — u The business of con- 
ception" says Mr. Stewart {Elements, chap. 3), "is to present 
us with an exact transcript of what we have felt or perceived. 
But we have, moreover, a power of modifying our conceptions, 
by combining the parts of different ones together, so as to 
form new wholes of our own creation. I shall employ fthe 
word imagination to express this power, and I apprehend 
that this is the proper sense of the word; if imagination 
be the power which gives birth to the productions of the poet 
and the painter. This is not a simple faculty of the mind. 
It presupposes abstraction to separate from each other qualities 
and circumstances which have been perceived in conjunction ; 
and also judgment and taste to direct us in forming the combi- 
nations." And he adds (chap. 6), a The operations of imagi- 
nation are by no means confined to the materials which concep- 
tion furnishes, but may be equally employed about all the 
subjects of our knowledge." — V. Conception, Fancy. 

IMAGINATION and MEMORY. — " Memory retains and recalls 
the past in the form which it assumed when it was previously 
before the mind. Imagination brings up the past in new 
shapes and combinations. Both of them are reflective of 
objects ; but the one may be compared to the mirror which 
reflects whatever has been before it, in its proper form and 
colour ; the other may be likened to the kaleidoscope which 
reflects what is before it in an infinite variety of new forms and 
dispositions." — M'Cosh, Typical Forms, p. 450. 

" Music when soft voices die 
Vibrates in the memory ; 
Odours, when sweet violets sicken, 
Live within the sense they quicken." — Shelley. 

See Hunt, Imagination and Fancy ; Wordsworth, Preface to 

Lyrical Ballads; Edin. Review for April, 1842, article on 

Moore's Poems; Akenside, Pleasures of Imagination. 

IMITATION (imitor, quasi mimitor, from fiipiofceit. Yossius.) — 

* l is a facultie to expresse livelie and perfitelie that example, 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 243 

IMITATION— 

which ye go about to follow." — Ascham, The Schulemaster, 
b. ii. 

As a social and improvable being, man has been endowed 
with a propensity to do as he sees others do. This propensity- 
manifests itself in the first instance spontaneously or instinc- 
tively. Children try to follow the gestures and movements of 
others, before their muscles are ready to obey, and to imitate 
sounds which they hear, before their voice is able to do so. 
Mr. Stewart has made a distinction (Elements, vol. iii., chap. 
2) between the propensity and the power of imitation. Both 
are peculiarly strong and lively in children, and answer the 
most important purposes. But the propensity to imitate 
what others do, and the manner of doing it, continues 
throughout [life, and requires to be carefully watched and 
properly directed. 

Man not only imitates his fellow-creatures, but tries to 
copy nature in all her departments. In the fine arts he 
imitates the forms which strike and please him. And the germ 
of some of the highest discoveries in science has been found in 
attempts to copy the movements and processes of nature. — 
Keid, Act. Powers, essay hi., part L, chap. 2. 
IMMANENCE implies the unity of the intelligent principle in 
creation, in the creation itself, and of course includes in it 
every genuine form of pantheism. Transcendence implies the 
existence of a separate divine intelligence, and of another and 
spiritual state of being, intended to perfectionate our own." — 
J. D. Morell, Manchester Papers, Xo. 2, pp. 108-9. 
IMMANENT (immaneo, to remain in), means that which does 
not pass out of a certain subject or certain limits. u Lo- 
gicians distinguish two kinds of operations of the mind; the 
first kind produces no effect without the mind, the last does. 
The first they call immanent acts ; the second transitive. All 
intellectual operations belong to the first class ; they produce 
no effect upon any external object." — lleid, Intel!. Pow., essay 
ii., chap. 14. 

11 Even some voluntary acts, as attention, deliberation, pur- 
pose, are also immanent." — Correspondence of Dr. Rciil, p. 81. 
" Conceiving, as well as projecting or resolving, arc what 



244 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

IMMANENT— 

the schoolmen called immanent acts of the mind, which produce 
nothing beyond themselves. But painting is a transitive act, 
which produces an effect distinct from the operation, and this 
effect is the picture." — Reid, Intell. Pow., essay iv., chap. 1. 

The logical sense assigned to this word by Kant, is somewhat 
different. According to him we make an immanent and valid 
use of the forms of the understanding, and conceive of the 
matter, furnished by the senses, according to our notions, of 
time and space. But when we try to lift ourselves above ex- 
perience and phenomena, and to conceive of things as they are 
in themselves, we are making a transcendent and illegitimate 
use of our faculties. 

Theologians say, God the Father generated the Son by an 
immanent act, but he created the world by a transient act. 

The doctrine of Spinoza (Ethic, pars 1, pref. 18) is, Deus 
est omnium rerum causa immanens, non vero transiens, — that is T 
all that exists, exists in God ; and there is no difference in 
substance between the universe and God. 

" We are deceived, when, judging the infinite essence by our 
narrow selves, we ascribe intellections, volitions, decrees, pur- 
poses, and such like immanent actions to that nature which hath 
nothing in common with us, as being infinitely above us." — 
Glanvill, Vanity of Dogmatizing, edit. 1661, p. 101. 
IMMATERIAL ISM is the doctrine of Bishop Berkeley, that 
there is no material substance, and that all being may be re- 
duced to mind, and ideas in a mind. 

Swift, in a letter to Lord Carteret, of date 3d September, 
1724, speaking of Berkeley, says, " Going to England very 
young, about thirteen years ago, he became founder of a sect 
there, called the immaterialists, by the force of a very curious 
book upon that subject." 

" In the early part of his own life, he (Dr. Reid) informs us 
that he was actually a convert to the scheme of immaterialism ; 
a scheme which he probably considered as of a perfectly in- 
offensive tendency, so long as he conceived the existence of 
the material world to be the only point in dispute." — Reid, 
Intell. Pow., essay ii., chap. 10. 

A work published a few years ago in defence of Berkeley's 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 245 

IMMATERIAI.ISUI— 

doctrine, was entitled Immaterialism ; and a prize offered to 
any one who would refute the reasoning of it. 

I1WMATEBIALITY is predicated of mind, to denote that as a 
substance it is different from matter. Spirituality is the positive 
expression of the same idea. Simplicity is also used in the 
same sense. Matter is made up of parts into which it can be 
resolved. Mind is simple and has no parts, and so cannot be 
dissolved. The materiality of the soul was maintained by 
Tertullian, Arnobius, and others, during the three first cen- 
turies. At the end of the fourth, the immateriality of the soul 
was professed by Augustin, Nemesius, and Mamertus Claudia- 
mis. — Guizot, Hist, of Civiliz., vol. L, p. 394. 

IMPORT AMTY (OF THE SOUL) is one of the doctrines of 
natural religion. At death the body dies, and is dissolved 
into its elements. The soul being distinct from the body, is 
not affected by the dissolution of the body. How long, or in 
what state it may survive after the death of the body, is not 
intimated by the term immortality. But the arguments to 
prove that the soul survives the body, all go to favour the 
belief that it will live for ever. 

See Plato, Phcedon; Porteous, Sermons; Sherlock, On the 
Immortality of the Soul; Watson, Intimations of a Future 
State; Bakewell, Evidence of a Future State; Autenrieth, On 
Man, and his Hope of Immortality, Tubingen, 1815. 

IMUIUTABllilTY is the absence or impossibility of change. It 
is applied to the Supreme Being to denote that there can be 
no inconstancy in his character or government. It was argued 
for by the heathens. See Bishop Wilkins, Natural Religion 

IMPE1VETR ARIDITY is one of the primary qualities of matter, 
in virtue of which the same portion of space cannot at the same 
time be occupied by more than one portion of matter. It is 
extension, or the quality of occupying space. A nail driven 
into a board does not penetrate the wood ; it merely separates 
and displaces the particles. Things are penetrable, when two 
or more can exist in the same space — as two angels ; impene- 
trable, when not — as two stones. 

IJMLPERATE.— F. ELICIT, Act. 

IMPERATIVE (imperativ), that which contains a should or ought 



246 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

IMPERATIVE— 

(sollen). It is the formula of the commandment (geboi) of 
reason. 

IMPERATIVE (CATEGORICAL, THE), is the phrase em- 
ployed by Kant, to denote that the moral law is absolute and 
obligatory. The practical reason speaks to us in the categorical 
imperative, that is, in seeing an action to be right, we see, at 
the same time, that we ought to do it. And this sense of 
obligation springs from no view of the consequences of the 
action, as likely to be beneficial, but is a primitive and absolute 
idea of the reason ; involving, according to Kant, the power to 
obey, or not to obey. We are under obligation, therefore we 
are free. Moral obligation implies freedom. 

IMPOSSIBLE (THE), or that which cannot be, has been distin- 
guished as the metaphysically or absolutely impossible, or that 
which implies a contradiction, as to make a square circle, or 
two straight lines to enclose a space ; the physically impossible, 
the miraculous, or that which cannot be brought about by 
merely physical causes, or in accordance with the laws of na- 
ture, as the death of the soul ; and the ethically impossible, or 
that which cannot be done without going against the dictates 
of right reason, or the enactments of law, or the feelings of 
propriety. That which is morally impossible, is that against 
the occurrence of which there is the highest probable evidence, 
as that the dice should turn up the same number a hundred 
successive times. — Whately, Log., Append, i. 

" It may be as really impossible for a person in his senses, 
and without any motive urging him to it, to drink poison, as it 
is for him to prevent the effects of it after drinking it ; but who 
sees not these impossibilities to be totally different in their 
foundation and meaning ? or what good reason can there be 
against calling the one a moral and the other a natural impossi- 
bility?" — Price, Review, chap. 10, p. 431. 

IMPRESSION (imprimo, to press in, or on), is the term employed 
to denote the change on the nervous system arising from a 
communication between an external object and a bodily organ. 
It is obviously borrowed from the effect which one piece of 
matter which is hard has, if pressed upon another piece of 
matter which is softer ; as the seal leaving its impression or 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 247 

IMPRESSION— 

configuration upon the wax. It is not intended, however, to 
convey any affirmation as to the nature of the change which 
is effected in the nervous system, or as to the nature of sensa- 
tion : and still less to confound this preliminary change with 
the sensation itself. The term impression is also applied to 
the eifects produced upon the higher sensibility, or our senti- 
ments. Thus, we speak of moral impressions, religious impres- 
sions, impressions of sublimity and beauty. 

Hume divided all modifications of mind into impressions and 
ideas. Ideas were impressions when first received ; and became 
ideas when remembered and reflected on. See Reid, Intell. 
Poic. essay i.. chap. 1. 

"Mr. Stewart (Elements, vol. in., Addenda to vol. i., p. 
43). seems to think that the word impression was first in- 
troduced as a technical term, into the philosophy of mind, 
by Hume. This is not altogether correct : for, besides the 
instances which Mr. Stewart himself adduces, of the illus- 
tration attempted, of the phenomena of memory from the 
analogy of an impress and a trace, words corresponding to 
impression were among the ancients familiarly applied to the 
processes of external perception, imagination, &c, in the 
Atomistic, the Platonic, the Aristotelian, and the Stoical 
philosophies : while among modern psychologists (as Descartes 
and Gassendi), the term was likewise in common use.'' — Sir 
Will. Hamilton, Beid's Works, p. 29-4, note. 

Dr. Reid (Intell. Pow., essay ii.), distinguishes the impressions 
made on the organs of sense into mediate and immediate. The 
impressiojis made on the sense of touch are immediate, the ex- 
ternal body and the organ being in contact. The impressions 
made on the ear by sounding bodies are mediate, requiring the 
air and the vibrations of the air to give the sensation of hear- 
ing. It may be questioned whether this distinction is well or 
deeply founded. See Dr. Young, Intell. Philosoph., p. 71; 
Sir Will. Hamilton, Rod's Works, p. 104. 
IMPULSE and IMPULSIVE (impello, to drive on), are used 
in contradistinction to reason and rational, to denote the 
influence of appetite and passion as differing from the authority 
of reason and conscience. " It may happen, that when appe- 



248 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

IMPULSE— 

tite draws one way, it may be opposed, not by any appetite or 
passion, but by some cool principle of action, which has 
authority without any impulsive force. — Reid, Act. Pow., 
essay iii., pt. ii., chap. 1. 

u Passion often gives a violent impulse to the will, and makes 
a man do what he knows he shall repent as long as he lives." — 
Ibid, chap. 6. 

IMPUTATION (imputo, to ascribe, to charge), is a judgment by 
which a person is considered the author of an action. In all 
moral action there is the presence of knowledge and intention 
on the part of the agent. In such cases he is held to be 
responsible, and the action is imputed to him or set down to 
his account. 

INCLINATION (inclino, to lean towards), is a form or degree 
of natural desire. It is synonymous with propensity or with the 
penchant of the French. It is more allied to affection than to 
appetite. u It does not appear that in things so intimately 
connected with the happiness of life, as marriage and the choice 
of an employment, parents have any right to force the incli- 
nations of their children." — Beattie, Mor. Science, vol. ii., part 
ii. — V. Disposition, Tendency. 

INDEFINITE (in and definitum, that which is not limited), 
means that, the limits of which are not determined, or at least 
not so determined as to be apprehended by us. The definite is 
that of which the form and limits are determined and appre- 
hended by us. That of which we know not the limits, comes to 
be regarded as having none ; and hence indefinite has been 
confounded with the infinite. But they ought to be carefully 
distinguished. The infinite is absolute ; it is that of which we 
not only know not the limits, but which has and can have no 
limit. The indefinite is that of which there is no limit fixed* 
You can suppose it enlarged or diminished, but still it is finite. 
— V. Infinite. 

Leibnitz, Discours de la Conformite de la Foi et de la 
Raison, sect. 70; Descartes, Princip. Philosophy pars 1, c. 26, 
et27. 

INDIFFERENCE (Liberty ©f) is that state of mind in which 
the will is not influenced or moved to choose or to refuse an 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 249 

INDIFFERNCE- 

object, but is equally ready to do either. It is also called 
liberty of contrariety. It should rather be called liberty of 
indetermination, or that state in which the mind is when it has 
not determined to do one of two or more things. — V. Liberty, 
Will. 

INDIFFERENT. — An action in morals is said to be indifferent, 
that is, neither right nor wrong, when, considered in itself or in 
specie, it is neither contrary nor conformable to any moral law 
or rule ; as, to bow the head. Such an action becomes right 
or wrong, when the end for which it is done, or the circum- 
stances in which it is done are considered. It is then regarded 
in individuo ; as, to bow the head, in token of respect, or in a 
temple, in token of adoration. 

INDIFFERENTISM or H>ENTISM — q. v., is sometimes em- 
ployed to denote the philosophy of Schelling, according to 
which there is no difference between the real and the ideal, or 
the idea and the reality, or rather that the idea is the reality. 

Indifferentism is also used to signify the want of religious 
earnestness. "In the indifferentism of the Lutheran Church, 
we see a marked descent towards the rationalism which has 
overspread the states of Germany." — Dr. Vaughan, Essays, 
vol. ii., p. 255. 

IITOISCERNHSIiES (Identity of).— It is a doctrine of the philo- 
sophy of Leibnitz, that no two things can be exactly alike. 
The difference between them is always more than a numerical 
difference. We may not always be able to discern it, but still 
there is a difference. Two things radically indiscernible the 
one from the other, that is, having the same qualities, and of 
the same quantity, would not be two things, but one. For the 
qualities of a thing being its essence, perfect similitude would 
be identity. But Kant objected that two things perfectly alike, 
if they did not exist in the same place at the same time, would, 
by this numerical difference, be constituted different individuals. 
— Leibnitz, Nouveaux Essais, Avant-Propos. 

" There is no such thing as two individuals indiscernible from 
each other. An ingenious gentleman of my acquaintance, 
discoursing with me, in the presence of Her Electoral Highness 
the Princess Sophia, in the garden of Herenhausen, thought 



250 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. / 

INDISCERNIBLE^— 

he could find two leaves perfectly alike. The Princess defied 
him to do it, and he ran all over the garden a long time to look 
for some, but it was to no purpose. Two drops of water, or 
milk, viewed through a microscope, will appear distinguishable 
from each other. This is an argument against atoms ; which 
are confuted, as well as a vacuum, by the principles of true 
metaphysics. 

" To suppose two things indiscernible, is to suppose the same 
thing under two names." — Leibnitz, Fourth Paper to Clarke, 
p. 95. 

" From the principle of the sufficient reason I infer that 
there cannot be in nature two real beings absolutely indiscern- 
ible ; because if there were, God and nature would act without 
reason, in treating the one differently from the other ; and 
thus God does not produce two portions of matter perfectly 
equal and alike." — Leibnitz, Fifth Paper to Clarke. 
INDIVIDUAL, INDIVIDUALISM, INDIVIDUALITY, IN- 
DIVIDUATION (from in and divido, to divide). 
Individual was defined by Porphyry — Id cujus proprietates alteri 
simul convenire non possunt. 

" An object which is, in the strict and primary sense, one, 
and cannot be logically divided, is called individual." — Whately, 
Log., b. ii., ch. 5, § 5. 

An individual is not absolutely indivisible, but that which 
cannot be divided without losing its name and distinctive 
qualities, that which cannot be parted into several other things 
of the same nature, is an individual whole. A stone or a 
piece of metal may be separated into parts, each of which shall 
continue to have the same qualities as the whole. But a plant 
or an animal when separated into parts loses its individuality ; 
which is not retained by any of the parts. We do not ascribe 
individuality to brute matter. But what is that which distin- 
guishes one organized being, or one living being, or one 
thinking being from all others ? This is the question so much 
agitated by the schoolmen, concerning the principle of indivi- 
duation. In their barbarous Latin it was called Hcecceietas, 
that is, that in virtue of which we say this and not that ; or 
Ecceietas, that of which we say, lo! here, and not anywhere 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 251 

II¥l>IVIl>UAIi— 

else. Peter, as an individual, possesses many properties which 
are quiddative, or common to him with others, such as substan- 
tialitas, corporeietas, animalitas, Humanitas. But he has also 
a reality, which may be called Petreietas or Peterness, which 
marks all the others with a difference, and constitutes him 
Peter. It is the Hcecceietas which constitutes the principle of 
individuation. It was divided into the extrinsic and intrinsic. 

The number of properties which constituted an individuum 
extrinsecum, are enumerated in the following versicle : — 

Forma, figura, locus, tempus, cum nomine, sanguis, 
Patria, sunt septem, quae non habet unum ei alter. 

You may call Socrates a philosopher, bald, big-bellied, the 
son of Sophroniscus, an Athenian, the husband of Xantippe, 
&c, any one of which properties might belong to another man; 
but the congeries of all these is not to be found but in 
Socrates. 

The intrinsic principle of individuation, is the ultimate reality 
of the being — ipsa rei entitas. In physical substances, the 
intrinsic principle of individuation is ipsa materia et forma cum 
unione. 

Hutcheson has said (Metaphys., pars 1, chap. 3), " Si 
quceratur de causa cur res sit una, aut de Individuations prin- 
cipio in re ipsa; non aliud assignandum, quam ipsa rei natura 
existens. Qumcunque enim causa rem quamlibet fecerat aut 
creaverat, earn unam etiam fecerat, aut individuam, quo sensu 
volunt Metaphysici." 

Leibnitz has a dissertation, De principio Individuations, 
which has been thought to favour nominalism. Yet he main- 
tained that individual substances have a real positive existence, 
independent of any thinking subject. 
Individuality* like personal identity, belongs properly to intelli- 
gent and responsible beings. Consciousness reveals it to us 
that no being can be put in our place, nor confounded with us, 
nor we with others. We are one and indivisible. 

u Individuality is scarcely to be found among the inferior 
animals. When it is, it has been acquired or taught. Indivi- 
duality is not individualism. The latter refers everything to 



252 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

IHTDIVroiTAIi— 

self, and sees nothing but self in all things. Individuality con- 
sists only in willing to be self, in order to be something." — 
Vinet, Essais de Philosophy Mor., Paris, 1847, p. 142. 

But in the Elements of Individualism, by William Maccall, 
8vo, Lond., 1847, the word individualism is used in the sense 
assigned above to individuality. 
IHTDUCTION (Method or Process of) (enocyayv;, inductio). — "It 
has been said that Aristotle attributed the discovery of induc- 
tion to Socrates, deriving the word knccyayy} from the Socratic 
accumulation of instances, serving as antecedents to establish 
the requisite conclusion." — Devey, Log., p. 151, note. 

" Inductio est argumentum quo ex plurium singularium recen- 
sione aliquid universale concluditur." — Le Grand, Inst. Philo- 
sophy p. 57, edit. 1675. 

Inductio est argumentum quo probatur quid verum esse de 
quopiam generali, ex eo quod verum sit de particularibus omnibus, 
saltern de tot ut sit credibile. — Wallis, Inst. log., p. 198, 4th edit. 

Induction is a kind of argument which infers, respecting a 
whole class, what has been ascertained respecting one or more 
individuals of that class. — Whately, Log., book ii., chap. 5, § 5. 

" Induction is that operation of mind by which we infer 
that what we know to be true in a particular case or cases, 
will be true in all cases which resemble the former in certain 
assignable respects. In other words, induction is the process 
by which we conclude that what is true of certain individuals 
of a class, is true of the whole class, or that what is true at 
certain times will be true under similar circumstances at all 
times."— Mill, Log., b. hi, ch. 2, § 1. 

" Induction is usually denned to be the process of drawing 
a general rule from a sufficient number of particular cases ; 
deduction is the converse process of proving that some property 
belongs to the particular case from the consideration that it 
belongs to the whole class in which the case is found. That all 
bodies tend to fall towards the earth is a truth which we have 
obtained from examining a number of bodies coming under 
our notice, by induction ; if from this general principle we 
argue that the stone we throw from our hand will show the 
same tendency, we adopt the deductive method 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 253 

INDUCTION— 

.More exactly, we may define the inductive method as the 
process of discovering laws and rules from facts, and causes 
from effects ; and the deductive, as the method of deriving 
facts from laws and effects from their causes." — Thomson, 
Outline of the Laws of Thought, 2d edit., pp. 321, 323. 

According to Sir William Hamilton (Discussions, p. 156), 
" Induction has been employed to designate three very differ- 
ent operations — 1. The objective process of investigating 
particular facts, as preparatory to induction, which is not a 
process of reasoning of any kind. 2. A material illation of the 
universal from the singular, as warranted either by the general 
analogy of nature, or the special presumptions afforded by the 
object-matter of any real science. 3. A formal illation of the 
universal from the individual, as legitimated solely by the laws 
of thought, and abstract from the conditions of this or that 'par- 
ticular matter.' The second of these is the inductive method 
of Bacon, which proceeds byway of rejections and conclusions, 
so as to arrive at those axioms or general laws from which we 
infer by way of synthesis other particulars unknown to us, and 
perhaps placed beyond reach of direct examination. Aris- 
totle's definition coincides with the third, and ' induction is an 
inference drawn from all the particulars' {Prior Analyt., ii., 
c. 23). The second and third have been confounded. But 
the second is not a logical process at all, since the conclusion 
is not necessarily inferrible from the premiss, for the some of 
the antecedent does not necessarily legitimate the all of the 
conclusion, notwithstanding that the procedure may be war- 
ranted by the material problem of the science or the funda- 
mental principles of the human understanding. The third 
alone is properly an induction of Logic ; for Logic does not 
consider things, but the general forms of thought under which 
the mind conceives them ; and the logical inference is not 
determined by any relation of casuality between the premiss 
and the conclusion, but by the subjective relation of reason 
and consequence as involved in the thought." 

u The Baconian or Material Induction proceeds on the 
assumption of general laws in the relations of physical pheno- 
mena, and endeavours, by select observations and experi- 



254 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

INDUCTION— 

ments, to detect the law in any particular case. This, whatever 
be its value as a general method of physical investigation, has 
no place in Formal Logic. The Aristotelian or Formal Induc- 
tion proceeds on the assumption of general laws of thought, 
and inquires into the instances in which, by such laws, we are 
necessitated to reason from an accumulation of particular 
instances to an universal rule." — Mansel, Prolegom. Log., 
p. 209. 

On the difference between induction as known and prac- 
tised by Aristotle, and as recommended by Lord Bacon, see 
Stewart, Elements, part ii., chap. 4, sect 2. 
INDUCTION (Principle of). — By the principle of induction is 
meant the ground or warrant on which we conclude that 
what has happened in certain cases, which have been observed, 
will also happen in other cases, which have not been observed. 
This principle is involved in the words of the wise man, Eccles. 
i. 9, " The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be: 
and that which is done is that which shall be done." In 
nature there is nothing insulated. All things exist in con- 
sequence of a sufficient reason, all events occur according to 
the efficacy of proper causes. In the language of Newton, 
Effectuum naturalium ejusdem generis ecedem sunt causce. The 
same causes produce the same effects. The principle of induc- 
tion is an application of the principle of casuality. Phenomena 
have their proper causes, and these causes operate according 
to a fixed law. This law has been expressed by saying, 
substance is persistent. Our belief in the established order of 
nature is a primitive judgment, according to Dr. Beid and 
others, and the ground of all* the knowledge we derive from 
experience. According to others this belief is a result or 
inference derived from experience. On the different views 
as to this point compare Mill's Log., b. iii., ch. 3, with 
Whewell's Philosophy of Inductive Sciences, book i., ch. 6. 
Also, the Quarterly Review, vol. lxviii. 

On the subject of induction in general, see Beid, lntell. Poiv., 
essay vi., ch. 5 ; Inquiry, ch. vi., sect. 24 ; Stewart, Elements, 
vol. i., ch. 4, sect. 5; Pliilosoph. Essays, p. 74 ; Boy er Col- 
lard, (Euvres de Reid, par Mons. Jouffroy, torn, iv., p. 277. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 255 

INERTIA. — That property of matter by which it would always 
continue in the same state of rest or motion in which it was 
put, unless changed by some external force. Resistance to 
change of state. The quantity of matter in a body is deter- 
mined by its quantity of inertia ; and this is estimated by the 
quantity of force required to put it in motion at a given rate. 
Kepler conceiving the disposition of a body to maintain its 
state of motion as indicating an exertion of power, prefixed 
the word vis to inertia, Leibnitz maintained that matter 
manifests force in maintaining its state of rest. 

" The vis insita, or innate force of matter, is a power of 
resisting by which every body, as much as in it lies, endea- 
vours to persevere in its present state, whether it be of rest or 
of moving uniformly forward in a straight line. This force is 
ever proportional to the body whose force it is ; and differs 
nothing from the inactivity of the mass but in our manner of 
conceiving it. A body, from the inactivity of matter, is not 
without difficulty put out of its state of rest or motion. Upon 
which account this vis insita may, by a most significant name, 
be called vis inertice, or force of inactivity." — Xewton, Princijj., 
defin. 3. 
IN ESSE 5 IN POSSE, — Things that are not, but which may be, 
are said to be in posse ; things actually existing are said to be 
in esse. 
INFERENCE (infer o, to bear, or bring in), is of the same deri- 
vation as illation and induction — q. v. 

u To infer is nothing but by virtue of one proposition laid 
down as true, to draw in another as true ; t. e., to see, or 
suppose such a connection of the two ideas of the inferred 
proposition." — Locke, Essay on Hum. Understand., book iv., 
chap. 17. 

" An inference is a proposition which is perceived to be true, 
because of its connection with some known fact. There are 
many things and events which are always found together ; or 
which constantly follow each other : therefore, when we observe 
one of these things or events, we infer that the other also 
exists, or has existed, or will soon take place. If we see the 
prints of human feet on the sands of an unknown coast, we 
infer that the country is inhabited ; if these prints appear to 



256 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

INFERENCE— 

be fresh, and also below the level of high water, we infer that 
the inhabitants are at no great distance ; if the prints are those 
of naked feet, we infer that these inhabitants are savages; 
or if they are the prints of shoes, we infer that they are, in 
some degree, civilized." — Taylor, Elements of Thought. 

"We ought to comprehend, within the sphere of inference, 
all processes wherein a truth, involved in a thought or thoughts 
given as antecedent, is evolved in a thought which is found as 
consequent." — Spalding, Log., p. 1. 

"We infer immediately, either by contraposition, by sub- 
alternation, by opposition (proper), or by conversion." — p. 160. 

Mediate inference is the syllogistic. 
INFERENCE and PROOF. — " Reasoning comprehends inferring 
and proving; which are not two different things, but the same 
thing regarded in two different points of view ; like the road 
from London to York, and the road from York to London. 
He who infers, proves; and he who proves, infers; but the 
word infer fixes the mind first on the premiss and then on the 
conclusion; the word prove, on the contrary, leads the mind 
from the conclusion to the premiss. Hence, the substantives 
derived from these words respectively, are often used to express 
that which, on each occasion, is last in the mind ; inference 
being often used to signify the conclusion (i. e., proposition 
inferred), and proof \ the premiss. To infer, is the business of 
the philosopher ; to prove, of the advocated — Whately, Log., 
b. iv., ch. 3, § 1. 

Proving is the assigning a reason (or argument) for the 
support of a given proposition ; inferring is the deduction of 
a conclusion from given premisses." — Whately, ibid. 

" When the grounds for believing anything are slight, we 
term the mental act or state induced a conjecture; when 
they are strong, we term it an inference or conclusion. In- 
crease the evidence for a conjecture, it becomes a conclusion ; 
diminish the evidence for a conclusion, it passes into a con- 
jecture." — S. Bailey, Theory of Reasoning, pp. 31, 32, 8vo, 
Lond., 1851.— V. Fact. 
INFINITE (in and finitum, unlimited or rather limitless). — 
In geometry, infinite is applied to quantity which is greater 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 257 

INFINITE— 

than any assignable magnitude. But strictly speaking it 
means that which is not only without determinate bounds, but 
which cannot possibly admit of bound or limit. 

" The infinite expresses the entire absence of all limitation, 
and is applicable to the one infinite Being in all his attributes. 
The absolute expresses perfect independence, both in being 
and in action. The unconditioned indicates entire freedom 
from every necessary relation. The whole "three unite in 
expressing the entire absence of all restriction. But let this 
be particularly observed, they do not imply that the one 
infinite Being cannot exist in relation, they only imply that He 
cannot exist in a necessary relation, that is, if He exist in 
relation, that relation cannot be a necessary condition of his 
existence." — Calderwood, Philosophy of the Infinite, p. 37. — 
V. Absolute, Unconditioned. 

As to our idea of the infinite there are two opposite 
opinions. 

According to some, the idea is purely negative, and springs 
up when we contemplate the ocean or the sky, or some object 
of vast extent to which we can assign no limits. Or, if the 
idea has anything positive in it, that is furnished by the 
Imagination, which goes on enlarging the finite without limit. 

On the other hand it is said that the enlarging of the finite 
can never furnish the idea of the infinite, but only of the 
indefinite. The indefinite is merely the confused apprehension 
of what may or may not exist. But the idea of the infinite 
is the idea of an objective reality, and is implied as a necessarv 
condition of every other idea. We cannot think of body but 
as existing in space, nor of an event but as occurring in time ; 
and space and duration are necessarily thought of as infinite. 

But have we or can we have knowledge of the infinite? 
Boethius {In Freed., p. 113, edit. Bas.) is quoted as saying, 
" Infinitorum nulla cognitio est ; infinita namque animo com- 
prehendi nequeunt ; quod autem ratione mentis circumdari 
non potest, nullius scientise fine concluditur : quare infini- 
torum scientia nulla est." 

On the other hand, Cudworth has said (Jntell. System, p. 
449), — u Since infinite is the same with absolutely perfect, we 



258 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY, 

INFINITE— 

having a notion or idea of the latter must needs have of the 
former." 

But, while we cannot comprehend the infinite, we may appre- 
hend it in contrast or relation with the finite. And this is 
what the common sense of men leads them to rest satisfied 
with, and, without attempting the metaphysical difficulty of 
reconciling the existence of the infinite with that of the finite, 
to admit the existence of both. 

" Truth is bigger than our minds, and we are not the same 
with it, but have a lower participation only of the intellectual 
nature, and are rather apprehenders than comprehenders there- 
of. This is indeed one badge of our creaturely state, that we 
have not a perfectly comprehensive knowledge, or such as 
is adequate and commensurate to the essence of things." — 
Cudworth. 

Ancillon, Essai sur VIdee et le Sentiment ck VInfini ; Cousin. 
Cours de Philosophy et Hist, de la Philosophy Sir W. Hamilton, 
Discussions on Philosophy, &c. ; L. Velthuysen, Dissertatio de 
Finito et Infinito ; Descartes, Meditations. 

" The infinite and the indefinite may be thus distinguished : 
the former implies an actual conceiving the absence of limits ; 
the latter is a not conceiving the presence of limits — processes 
as different as searching through a house and discovering that 
a certain person is not there, as from shutting our eyes and not 
seeing that he is there. Infinity belongs to the object of 
thought ; indefiniteness to the manner of thinking of it." — 
Mansel, Lt&t. on Philosoph. of Kant, p. 29. 
iNFliUX (Physical) (infiuo, to flow in), is one of the theories 
as to our perception of external objects. — u The advocates of 
this scheme maintained that real things are the efficient causes 
of our perceptions, the word efficient being employed to 
signify that the things by means of some positive power or 
inherent virtue which they possess, were competent to transmit 
to the mind a knowledge of themselves, .... External 
objects were supposed to operate on the nervous system by the 
transmission of some kind of influence, the nervous system was 
supposed to carry on the process by the transmission of certain 
images or representations, and thus our knowledge of external 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 259 

INFLUX- 

tilings was supposed to be brought about. The representations 
alone came before the mind ; the things by which they were 
caused remained occult and unknown." — Ferrier, Inst, of 
Metaphys., p. 472.— V. Causes (Occasional). 

INJURY (injuria, from in and jus, neglect or violation of right), 
in morals and jurisprudence is the intentional doing of wrong. 
We may bring harm or evil upon others without intending it. 
But injury implies intention, and awakens a sense of injustice 
and indignation, when it is done. It is on this difference 
in the meaning of harm and injury that Bishop Butler founds 
the distinction of resentment into sudden and deliberate. — 
Butler, Sermons, yiii. and 9. 

INNATE (IDEAS). — Ideas, as to their origin, have been dis- 
tinguished into adventitious, or such as we receive from the 
objects of external nature, as the idea or notion of a mountain, 
or a tree ; factitious, or such as we franie out of ideas already 
acquired, as of a golden mountain, or of a tree with golden 
fruit: and innate, or such as are inborn and belong to the 
mind from its birth, as the idea of God or of immortality. 
Cicero, in various passages of his treatise Be Natura Deorum, 
speaks of the idea of God and of immortality as being inserted, 
or engraven, or inborn in the mind. " Intelligi necesse est, esse 
deos, quoniam insitas eorum, vel potius innatas cognitiones Tiabe- 
mus." — Lib. i., sect. 17. In like manner, Origen (Adv. Celsum, 
lib. i., cap. 4), has said, " That men would not be guilty if they 
did not carry in their mind common notions of morality, innate 
and written in divine letters." It was in this form that Locke 
(Essay on Hum. Understand., book i.), attacked the doctrine 
of innate ideas. It has been questioned, however, whether the 
doctrine, as represented by Locke, was really held by the 
ancient philosophers. And Dr. Hutcheson (Gratio Inaugur- 
alis, De Naturali hominum Societate) has the following pas- 
sage : — M Omnes autem ideas, apprehensiones, et judicia, qua de. 
rebus, duce natura, formamus, quocunque demum tempore hoc 
fiat, sive quce naturce nostra virions quibuscunque, necessario 
fere, atque universaliter* recipiuntur, innata quantum memini, 

» We have here,in 1730, the two marks of necessity and universality which subsequently 
Were so much insisted on by Kant and others as characterizing all QUI & priori cognition? 



260 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

INNATE— 

dixerunt antiqui" Among modern philosophers it would be 
difficult to name any who held the doctrine in the form in 
which it has been attacked by Locke. In calling some of our 
ideas innate they seem merely to have used this word as synony- 
mous with natural, and applied it, as Hutcheson thinks the 
ancients did, to certain ideas which men, as human or rational 
beings, necessarily and universally entertain. — See Natural 
as distinguished from Innate. 

" There are three senses in which an idea may be supposed 
to be innate ; one, if it be something originally superadded to 
our mental constitution, either as an idea in the first instance 
fully developed ; or as one undeveloped, but having the power 
of self- development : another, if the idea is a subjective con- 
dition of any other ideas, which we receive independently of 
the previous acquisition ot this idea, and is thus proved to be 
in some way embodied in, or interwoven with, the powers by 
which the mind receives those ideas : a third, if, without being 
a subjective condition of other ideas, there be any faculty or 
faculties of mind, the exercise of which would suffice, inde- 
pendently of any knowledge acquired from without, spon- 
taneously to produce the idea. In the first case, the idea is 
given us at our first creation, without its bearing any special 
relation to our other faculties , in the second case, it is given 
us as a form, either of thought generally or of some particular 
species of thought, and is therefore embodied in mental powers 
by which we are enabled to receive the thought ; in the third 
case, it is, as in the second, interwoven in the original consti- 
tution of some mental power or powers ; not, however, as in 
the preceding case, simply as a pre-requisite to their exercise, 
but by their being so formed as by exercise spontaneously to 
produce the idea." — Dr. Alliot, Psychology and Theology, p. 
93, 12mo, Lond., 1855. 

The first of these three is the form in which the doctrine 
of innate ideas is commonly understood. This doctrine was at 
one time thought essential to support the principles of natural 
religion and morality. But Locke saw that these principles 
were safe from the attacks of the sceptic, although a belief in 
God and immortality, and a sense of the difference between 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 261 

INNATE— 

right and wrong were not implanted or inserted in the mind ; 
if it could be shown that men necessarily and universally came 
to them by the ordinary use of their faculties. He took a 
distinction between an innate law, and a law of nature {Essay 
on Hum. Understand., book i., ch. 3) ; and while he did not 
admit that there was a law ' ' imprinted on our minds in their 
very original," contended " that there is a law knowable 
by the light of nature." In like manner, Bishop Law said 
(King's Essay on Origin of Evil, p. 79, note), "It will really 
come to the same thing with regard to the usual attributes of 
God, and the nature of virtue and vice, whether the Deity 
has implanted these instincts and affections in us, or has 
framed and disposed us in such a manner — has given us such 
powers and placed us in such circumstances, that we must 
necessarily acquire them." — V. Nature (Law of.) 

" Though it appears not that we have any innate ideas or 
formed notions or principles laid in by nature, antecedently 
to the exercise of our senses and understandings ; yet it must 
be granted, that we were born with the natural faculty, 
whereby we actually discern the agreement or disagreement 
of some notions, so soon as we have the notions themselves ; 
as, that we can or do think, that therefore we ourselves are ; 
that one and two make three, that gold is not silver, nor ice 
formally water ; that the whole is greater than its part, &c, 
and if we should set ourselves to do it, we cannot deliberately 
and seriously doubt of its being so. This we may call intuitive 
knowledge, or natural certainty wrought into our very make 
and constitution." — Oldfield, Essay on Reason, p. 5, 8vo, 
Lond., 1707. 

" Some writers have imagined, that no conclusions can be 
drawn from the state of the passions for or against the Divine 
Benevolence, because they are not innate but acquired. This is 
frivolous. If we are so framed and placed in such circum- 
stances, that all these various passions must be acquired ; it is 
just the same thing as if they had been planted in us origi- 
nally." — Balguy, Divine Benevolence, p. 100, note. 

"Ni nos idees, ni nos sentiments, ne sont innes, mais ils 
sont naturels, fondes sur la constitution de notre esprit et de 



262- VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

INNATE— 

notre ame, et sur nos rapports avec tout ce qui nous environne.'' 
■ — Turgot, (Euvres, torn, iv., p. 308 ; quoted by Cousin, (Euvres, 
1 serie, torn, iv., p. 202. 

" We are prepared to defend the following propositions in 
regard to innate ideas, or constitutional principles of the 
mind. First, — Negatively, that there are no innate ideas in 
the mind (1.) as images or mental representations ; nor (2.) 
as abstract or general notions ; nor (3.) as principles of 
thought, belief, or action before the mind as principles. But, 
Second, — Positively (1.) that there are constitutional principles 
operating in the mind, though not before the consciousness as 
principles ; (2.) that these come forth into consciousness as 
individual (not general) cognitions or judgments ; and (3.) 
that these individual exercises, when carefully inducted, but 
only when so, give us primitive or philosophic truths. It 
follows that, while these native principles operate in the mind 
spontaneously, we are entitled to use them reflexly in philo- 
sophic or theologic speculations only after having determined 
their nature and rule by abstraction and generalization." 
M'Cosh, Meth. of Div. Govern., p. 508, 5th edit. 

" Though man does not receive from his Maker either specu- 
lative or moral maxims, as rules of judgment and of conduct, 
like so many perfect innate propositions enforcing assent in his 
very infancy ; yet he has received that constitution of mind 
which enables him to form to himself the general rules or first 
principles on which religion and science must be built, when 
he allows himself these advantages of cultivation and exercise, 
which every talent he possesses absolutely requires. And 
this is all that is pleaded for ; and it is sufficient for the end. 
Nor is there anything either mystical, or unphilosophical, or 
unscriptural in the notion. For if the proposition be not 
strictly innate, it arises from an innate power, which, in a sound 
mind, cannot form a proposition in any other way that will 
harmonize with enlightened reason and purified moral senti- 
ment than in that to which the natural bias of the mind leads." 
— Hancock, On Instinct, p. 414. 

The doctrine of innate ideas is handled by Locke in his 
Essay on Hum. Understand., book i., and by most authors 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 2G3 

INNATE— 

who treat of intellectual philosophy. — See also Ellis, Knowledge 
of Divine Things, pp. 59-86 ; Sherlock, On the Immortality of 
the Soul, chap. 2. 
INSTINCT Qu or euros and ariga, intits pungd), signifies an internal 
stimulus. 

In its widest signification it has been applied to plants as 
well as to animals ; and may be defined to be " the power or 
energy by which all organized forms are preserved in the indi- 
vidual, or continued in the species." It is more common, 
however, to consider instinct as belonging to animals. And 
in this view of it, Dr, Reid (Act. Poic, essay iii., part 1, chap. 2) 
has said: — "By instinct I mean a natural blind impulse to 
certain actions without having any end in view, without delibe- 
ration, and very often without any conception of what we do." 
An instinct, says Paley (Nat. Theol., chap. 18), "is a pro- 
pensity prior to experience and independent of instruction.'' 

" An instinct," says Dr. AVhately (Tract on Instinct, p. 21). 
i; is a blind tendency to some mode of action independent of 
any consideration on the part of the agent, of the end to which 
the action leads." 

There are two classes of actions, which, in the inferior 
animals, have been referred to instinct as their spring. 1. 
Those which have reference to the preservation of individuals — 
as the seeking and discerning the food which is convenient for 
them, and the using their natural organs of locomotion, and 
their natural means of defence and attack. 2. Those which 
have reference to the continuation of the species — as the 
bringing forth and bringing up of their young. 

The theories which have been proposed to explain the 
instinctive operations of the inferior animals may be arranged 
in three classes. 

I. According to the physical theories, the operations oi' 
instinct are all provided for in the structure and organization 
of the inferior animals, and do not imply any mind or soul. 
The principle of life may be developed — 

1. By the mechanical play of bodily orga?is. See Descartes, 
Epistles; Polignac, Anti-Lucretius, book vi. ; Xorris, Essay 
towards the Theory of an Ideal World, part 2, eh. 2. 



264 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

INSTINCT— 

2. By Irritability: Badham, Insect Life; Mason Good, 
Book of Nature, vol. ii., p. 132 ; Virey, De la Physiologie dans 
ses rapports, avec la Phihsophie, p. 394. 

3. By Sensation : Bushnan, Philosophy of Instinct and Reason, 
p. 178 ; Barlow, Connection oetween Physiology and Intellectual 
Philosophy ; Kirby, Bridgewater Treatise, vol. ii., p. 255. 

II. According to the psychical theories, the instinctive 
actions of the inferior animals are the results of mental powers 
or faculties possessed by them, analogous to those of under- 
standing in man. 

1. Mr. Coleridge calls instinct u the power of selecting and 
adapting means to a proximate end." But he thinks " that 
when instinct adapts itself, as it sometimes does, to varying 
circumstances, there is manifested by the inferior animals, an 
instinctive intelligence, which is not different in kind from 
understanding, or the faculty which judges according to sense 
in man." — Aids to Reflection, vol. i., p. 193, 6th edit. ; Green, 
Vital Dynamics, App. F, p. 88, or Coleridge's Works, vol. ii. ? 
App. B, 5. 

2. Dr. Darwin contends (Zoonomia, vol. i., 4to, pp. 256-7), 
- that what have been called the instinctive actions of the inferior 

animals are to be referred to experience and reasoning, as well 
as those of our own species ; " though their reasoning is from 
fewer ideas, is busied about fewer objects, and is exerted with 
less energy." 

3. Mr. Smellie (Philosophy of Nat. Hist., vol. i., 4to, p. 155), 
instead of regarding the instinctive actions of the inferior 
animals as the results of reasoning, regards the power of 
reasoning as itself an instinct. He holds that " all animals are, 
in some measure, rational beings ; and that the dignity and 
superiority of the human intellect are necessary results of the 
great variety of instincts which nature has been pleased to 
confer on the species." — p. 159. 

III. According to the theories which may be called hyper- 
psychical, the phenomena of instinct are the results of an 
intelligence, different from the human, which emanates upon 
the inferior animals from the supreme spirit or some subordi- 
nate spirit. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 265 

INSTINCT— 

This doctrine is wrapped up in the ancient fable, that the 
gods, when pursued by the Titans, fled into Egypt, and took 
refuge under the form of animals of different kinds. 

Father Bougeant, in a work entitled, A Philosophical 
Amusement on the Language of Beasts, contends that the bodies 
of the inferior animals are inhabited by fallen and reprobate 
spirits. 

Mr. French (Zoological Journal, No. 1) holds that the actions 
of the inferior animals are produced by good and evil spirits ; 
the former being the cause of the benevolent, and the latter of 
the ferocious instincts. 

Others have referred the operations of instinct to the direct 
agency of the Creator on the inferior animals. — See Newton, 
Optics, book iii., xx., query subjoined; Spectator, No. 120; 
Hancock, Essay on Instinct. 

Dr. B,eid has maintained (Act. Pow., essay iii., pt. i., chap. 
2), that in the human being many actions, such as sucking 
and swallowing, are done by instinct; while Dr. Priestley 
(Examin. of Reid, &c, p. 70) regards them as automatic or 
acquired. And the interpretation of natural signs and other 
acts which Dr. Reid considers to be instinctive, Dr. Priestley 
refers to association and experience. — V. Appetite. 
INTELLECT (intelligo, to choose between, to perceive a differ- 
ence). — Intellect, sensitivity, and will, are the three heads under 
which the powers and capacities of the human mind are now 
generally arranged. In this use of it, the term intellect 
includes all those powers by which we acquire, retain, and 
extend our knowledge, as perception, memory, imagination, 
judgment, &c. "It is by those powers and faculties which 
compose that part of his nature commonly called his intellect or 
understanding that man acquires his knowledge of external 
objects ; that he investigates truth in the sciences ; that 
he combines means in order to attain the ends he has in 
view ; and that he imparts to his fellow-creatures the acqui- 
sitions he has made." — Stewart, Active and Moral Powers, 
Introd. 

The intellectual powers are commonly distinguished from 
the moral powers ; inasmuch as it is admitted that the 



2G6 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

INTELLECT— 

moral powers partake partly of tlie intellect and partly of 
the sensitivity, and imply not only knowledge but feeling. 

And when the moral powers are designated active, it is not 
meant to assert that in exercising the intellectual powers the 
mind is altogether passive, but only to intimate that while the 
function of the intellectual powers is to give knowledge, the 
function of the active and moral powers is to prompt and regu- 
late actions. 

Lord Monboddo (Ancient Metaphysics, book ii., chap. 7) 
reduces the gnostic powers to two, viz. — sense and intellect. 
Under sense he includes the phantasy and also the comparing 
faculty, and that by which we apprehend ideas, either single or 
in combination. This he considers to be partly rational, and 
shared by us with the brutes. But intellect or vovg, he 
considers peculiar to man — it is the faculty by which we 
generalize and have ideas altogether independent of sense. 
He quotes Hierocles on the golden verses of Pythagoras, 
p. 160, edit. Needham), as representing the Kayos or \pvx,4 
KQyiKV), as holding a middle place betwixt the irrational or 
lowest part of our nature and intellect, which is the 
highest. 

" The term intellect is derived from a verb (intelligere), which 
signifies to understand : but the term itself is usually so applied 
as to imply a faculty which recognizes principles explicitly as 
well as implicitly ; and abstract as well as applied ; and therefore 
agrees with the reason rather than the understanding ; and the 
same extent of signification belongs to the adjective intellec- 
tual." — Whewell, Elements of Morality, introd. 12. 

" Understanding is Saxon and intellect is Latin for nearly 
the same idea : perhaps understanding describes rather the 
power of inference, a quickness at perceiving that which stands 
under the object of contemplation : perhaps intellect describes 
rather the power of judgment, a quickness at choosing between 
(inter and legere) the objects of contemplation." — Taylor, 
Synonyms. 
Intellect and Intellection. — " The mind of man is, by its native 
faculty, able to discern universal propositions, in the same 
manner as the sense does particular ones — that is, as the truth 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 267 

INTEIJLECT— 

of these propositions — Socrates exists, An eagle flies, Buce- 
phalus runs, is immediately perceived and judged of by the 
sense ; so these contradictory propositions cannot be both 
true ; What begins to exist has its rise from another ; Action 
argues that a thing exists (or, as it is vulgarly expressed, a 
thing that is not, acts not), and such-like propositions, which 
the mind directly contemplates and finds to be true by its 
native force, without any previous notion or applied reasoning; 
which method of attaining truth is by a peculiar name styled 
intellection, and the faculty of attaining it the intellect: 1 — 
Barrow, Mathem. Lectures, 1734, p. 72. 
Intellect and Intelligence. — u By Aristotle, vovg is used to 
denote — 

u 1. Our higher faculties of thought and knowledge. 

" 2. The faculty, habit, or place of principles, that is, of self- 
evident and self- evidencing notions and judgments. 

" The schoolmen, following Boethius, translated it by intel- 
lectus and intelligentia; and some of them appropriated the 
former of these terms to its first or general signification, the 
latter to its second or special." — Sir William Hamilton, ReitTs 
Works, note A, sect. 5. 

Intellect and intelligence are commonly used as synonymous. 
But Trusler has said, " It seems to me that intellectus ought to 
describe art or power, and intelligentia ought to describe 
use or habit of the understanding ; such being the tendency of 
the inflections in which the words terminate. In this case 
intellect or understanding power is a gift of nature ; and 
intelligence, or understanding habit, an accumulation of time. 
So discriminated, intellect is inspired, intelligence is acquired. 
The Supreme Intellect, when we are speaking of the Wisdom, 
the Supreme Intelligence when we are speaking of the Know- 
ledge of God. Every man is endowed with understanding ; 
but it requires reading to become a man of intelligence." — V. 
Reason, Understanding. 
Intellectus Patiens, and Intellectus Agcns. — Aristotle distin- 
guished between the intellectus patiens and intellectus agens. 
The former, perishing with the body (De Anima, cap. 5), by 
means of the senses, imagination, and memory, furnished the 



268 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

INTEIiliECT— 

matter of knowledge ; the latter, separable from the body, and 
eternal, gave that knowledge form. Under the impressions of 
the senses the mind is passive ; but while external things 
rapidly pass, imagination does not allow them altogether to 
escape, but the knowledge of them is retained by the memory. 
But this knowledge, being the knowledge of singulars, cannot 
give universal notions, but merely generalized ones. The 
intellectus agens, however, proceeding upon the information 
furnished by the senses, actually evolves the idea which the 
intellectus patiens potentially possessed. His illustration is, — 
as light makes colours existing potentially, actually to be, so 
the intellectus agens converts into actuality, and brings, as it 
were, to a new life, whatever was discovered or collected by 
the intellectus patiens. As the senses receive the forms of 
things expressed in matter, the intellect comprehends the 
universal form, which, free from the changes of matter, is really 
prior to it and underlies the production of it as cause. The 
common illustration of Aristotle is that the senses perceive the 
form of a thing, as it is to olpov or a height ; the intellect has 
knowledge of it as resembling ra xoiha, a hollow, out of which 
the height was produced. 

Aristotle has often been said to reduce all knowledge to 
experience. But although he maintained that we could not 
shut our eyes and frame laws and causes for all things, yet he 
maintained, while he appealed to experience, that the intellect 
was the ultimate judge of what is true. 

See Hermann Rassow, Aristotelis de Notionis Definitione 
Doctrina, Berol., 1343. 

According to Thomas Aquinas (Adv. Gentes, lib. iii., cap. 
41,) u Intellectus noster nihil intelligit sine pliantasmate." But 
he distinguished between the intellect passive and the intellect 
active ; the one receiving impressions from the senses, and the 
other reasoning on them. Sense knows the individual, intellect 
the universal. You see a triangle, but you rise to the idea of 
triangularity. It is this power of generalizing which specializes 
man and makes him what he is, intelligent. 
INTENT or INTENTION (in-tendo, to tend to), in morals and 
in law, means that act of the mind by which we contemplate 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 269 

INTENT— 

and design the accomplishment of some end. It is followed 
by the adoption and use of suitable means. But this is more 
directly indicated by the word purpose. " He had long har- 
boured the intention of taking away the life of his enemy, and 
for this purpose he provided himself with weapons." Purpose 
is a step nearer action than intention. But both in law and in 
morals, intention, according as it is right or wrong, good or 
bad, affects the nature or character of the action following. 
According to the doctrine of the Church of Rome, intention 
may altogether change the nature of an action. Killing may 
be no murder^ if done with the intention of freeing the church 
from a persecutor, and society from a tyrant. And if a priest 
administers any of the sacraments without the intention of 
exercising his priestly functions, these sacraments may be 
rendered void. — V. Election. 
INTENTION (Logical). 

Quoth he, whatever others deem ye, 

I understand your metonymy,* 

Your words of second-hand intention, 

When things by wrongful names you mention. 

Butler. Hudibras, part ii., canto 3, 1. 587. 

Intention, with logicians, has the same meaning as notion ; 

as it is by notions the mind tends towards or attends to objects. 

— V. ^Notion. 

Intention (First and Second). 

" Nouns of the first intention are those which are imposed 
upon things as such, that conception alone intervening, by 
which the mind is carried immediately to the thing itself. 
Such are man and stone. But nouns of the second intention 
are those which are imposed upon things not in virtue of what 
they are in themselves, but in virtue of their being subject to 
the intention which the mind makes concerning them : as. 
when we say that man is a species, and animal a genus." — 
Aquinas, Opuscula, xlii., art. 12, ad init. 

Raoul le Breton, Super Lib. Poster. Analyt. He was a 
Thomist. 

* "The transference of words from the primary to a secondary meaning, is what 
grammarians call metonymy. Thus a door signifies both an opening in the wall (more 
strictly called the doorway) and a hoard which closes it; which are things neither 
similar nor analogous. 1 '— Whately, Log., b. iii., § 10. 



270 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

JNTENTION— 

See Tractatio de Secundis Intentionibus secundum doctrinam 
Scoti. By Sarnanus, 4to, Ursellis, 1622. 

A first intention may be defined u a conception of a thing or 
things formed by the mind from materials existing without 
itself." 

A second intention is u a conception of another conception 
or conceptions formed by the mind from materials existing in 
itself." Thus the conceptions u man, animal, whiteness,'''' &c, 
are framed from marks presented by natural objects. u The 
conceptions, genus, species, accident, &c, are formed from the 
first intentions themselves viewed in certain relations to each 
other."— Mansel, Note to Aldrich, 1849, pp. 16, 17. 

See Review of Whateltfs Logic, No. cxv., Edin. Review. 
INTERPRETATION of NATURE.-" There are," says Bacon, 
(Nov. Org., i., Aph. 19,) u two ways, and can be only two, 
of seeking and finding truth. One springs at once from the 
sense, and from particulars, to the most general axioms ; and 
from principles thus obtained, and their truth assumed as a 
fixed point, judges and invents intermediate axioms. This is 
the way now in use. The other obtains its axioms (that is, 
its truths) also from the sense and from particulars, by a con- 
nected and gradual progress, so as to arrive, in the last place, 
at the most general truths. This is the true way, as yet 
untried. The former set of doctrines we call," he says, (Aph. 
26,) "for the sake of clearness, c Anticipation of Nature," 1 the 
latter the l Interpretation of Nature*? " 
INTUITION (from intueor, to behold). — " Sometimes the mind 
perceives the agreement or disagreement of two ideas imme- 
diately by themselves, without the intervention of any other ; 
and this, I think, we may call intuitive knowledge. For in 
this the mind is at no pains of proving or examining, but 
perceives the truth as the eye doth the light, only by being 
directed towards it. Thus, the mind perceives that white is 
not black, that a circle is not a triangle, that three are more 
than two, and equal to one and two." — Locke, Essay on Hum. 
Under stand., b. iv., ch. 2. 

" What we know or comprehend as soon as we perceive or 
attend to it, we are said to know by intuition: things which we 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 271 

INTUITION— 

know by intuition, cannot be made more certain by arguments, 
than they are at first. We know by intuition that all the parts 
of a thing together are equal to the whole of it. Axioms 
are propositions known by intuition. 1 '' — Taylor, Elements of 
Thought. 

" Intuition has been applied by Dr. Beattie and others, net 
only to the power by which we perceive the truth of the 
axioms of geometry, but to that by which we recognize the 
authority of the fundamental laws of belief, when we hear 
them' enunciated in language. My only objection to this use 
of the word is, that it is a departure from common practice ; 
according to which, if I be not mistaken, the proper objects of 
intuition are propositions analogous to the axioms prefixed to 
Euclid's Elements. In some other respects this innovation 
might perhaps be regarded as an improvement on the very 
limited and imperfect vocabulary of which we are able to avail 
ourselves in our present discussions." — Stewart, Elements, 
part ii., chap. 1, sect. 2. 

" Intuition is properly attributed and should be carefully 
restricted, to those instinctive faculties and impulses, external 
and internal, which act instantaneously and irresistibly, which 
were given by nature as the first inlets of all knowledge, and 
which we have called the Primary Principles, whilst self- 
evidence may be justly and properly attributed to axioms, or 
the Secondary Principles of truth." — Tatham, Chart and Scale 
of Truth, ch. 7, lect. 1. 

On the difference between knowledge as intuitive, immediate, 
or presentative, and as mediate, or representative, see Sir TV. 
Hamilton, Reid's Works, note b. 

Intuition is used in the extent of the German Anschauung. 
to include all the products of the perceptive (external or 
internal) and imaginative faculties ; every act of conscious- 
ness, in short, of which the immediate object is an individual. 
thing, state, or act of mind, presented under the condition 
of distinct existence in space or time." — Mansel, Prokgom. 
Log., p. 9. 

" Besides its original and proper meaning (as a visual 
perception), it has been employed to denote a kind a£appre- 



272 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

INTUITION— 

Tiension and a kind of judgment. Under the former head it 
has been used to denote, 1. A perception of the actual and 
present, in opposition to the abstractive knowledge which 
we have of the possible in imagination, and of the past in 
memory. 2. An immediate apprehension of a thing in itself, 
in contrast to a representative, vicarious or mediate, appre- 
hension of it, in or through something else. (Hence by Fichte, 
Schelling, and others, intuition is employed to designate the 
cognition as opposed to the conception of the absolute.) 3. The 
knowledge, which we can adequately represent in imagination, 
in contradistinction to the c symbolical ' knowledge which we 
cannot image, but only think or conceive, through and under 
a sign or word. (Hence, probably, Kant's application of the 
term to the forms of the sensibility, the imaginations of Time 
and Space, in contrast to the forms or categories of the 
Understanding). 4. Perception proper (the objective), in 
contrast to sensation proper (the subjective), in our sensitive 
consciousness. 5. The simple apprehension of a notion, in 
contradistinction to the complex apprehension of the terms of 
a proposition. 

" Under the latter head it has only a single signification, 
viz. : — To denote the immediate affirmation by the intellect, 
the predicate does or does not pertain to the subject, in what 
are called self-evident propositions. 7 ' — Sir W. Hamilton, Beid's 
Works, note A, sect. 5, p. 759. 
INTUITION and CONCEPTION. — " The perceptions of sense 
are immediate, those of the understanding mediate only ; sense 
refers its perceptions directly and immediately to an object. 
Hence the perception is singular, incomplex, and immediate, 
i. e., is intuition. When I see a star, or hear the tones of a 
harp, the perceptions are immediate, incomplex, and intuitive. 
This is the good old logical meaning of the word intuition. In 
our philosophic writings, however, intuitive and intuition have 
come to be applied solely to propositions ; it is here extended 
to the first elements of perception, whence such propositions 
spring. Again, intuition, in English, is restricted to percep- 
tions a priori ; but the established logical use and wont applies 
the word to every incomplex representation whatever ; and 



vocabulary of philosophy. 273 

i:vti;itio:v— 

it is left for further and more deep inquiry to ascertain what 
intuitions are founded on observation and experience, and 
what arise from a priori sources. ,: — Semple. Introd. to Meta- 
phys. of Ethics, p. 34 
l>TE\TlO> (invenio, to come in, or to come at) is the crea- 
tion or construction of something which has not before existed. 
Discovery is the making manifest something which hitherto 
has been unknown. We discover or uncover what is hidden. 
We come at new objects. Galileo invented the telescope. 
Harvey discovered the circulation of the blood. 

4 'We speak of the invention of printing, the discovery of 
America. Shift these words, and speak, for instance, of the 
iion of America, you feel at once how unsuitable the lan- 
guage is. And why? Because Columbus did not make that to 
be which before him had not been. America was there before 
he revealed it to European eyes ; but that which before was, 
he showed to be ; he withdrew the veil which hitherto had 
concealed it, he discovered it." — Trench, On Words. 

Xewton discovered the law of gravitation, but Watt invented 
the steam engine. We speak with a true distinction, of the 
5 of Art. the discoveries of Science. 

In Locke and his contemporaries, to say nothing of the 
older writers, to invent is currently used for to discover. Thus 
Bacon says. " Logic does not pretend to invent science, or the 
axioms of sciences, but passes it over with a cuique in sua arte 
credendumJ" — Adv. of Learning. 
IR03JTT (eigairuet, dissimulation), is an ignorance purposely 
affected to provoke or confound an antagonist. It was 
very much employed by Socrates against the Sophists. In 
modern times it was adopted by Burke in his Defence of 
Natural Society, in which, assuming the person of Boling- 
broke, he proves, according to the principles of that author, 
that the arguments he brought against ecclesiastical, would 
equally lie against civil, institutions. Sir William Drummond. 
in his CEdipus Judaicus, maintained that the history of the 
twelve patriarchs is a mythical representation of the signs of 
the Zodiac. Dr. Townsend, in his CEdipus JRomanus. attempts 
to show that upon the same principles the twelve patriarchs 



274 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

IRONY— 

were prophecies of the twelve Csesars. Dr. Whately, in a 
pamphlet entitled Historic Doubts, attempted to show that 
objections similar to those against the Scripture -history, and 
much more plausible, might be urged against all the received 
accounts of Napoleon Bonaparte. 



JUBOITIEIVT. — " A judgment is a combination of two concepts, 
related to one or more common objects of possible intuition." 
— Mansel, Prolegom. Log., p. 60. 

Our judgments, according to Aristotle, are either proble- 
matical, assertive, or demonstrable ; or, in other words, the 
results of opinion, of belief, or of science. 

u The problematical judgment is neither subjectively nor 
objectively true, that is, it is neither held with entire certainty 
by the thinking subject, nor can we show that it truly repre- 
sents the object about which we judge. It is a mere opinion. 
It may, however, be the expression of our presentiment of 
certainty ; and what was held as mere opinion before proof, 
may afterwards be proved to demonstration. Great dis- 
coveries are problems at first, and the examination of them leads 
to a conviction of their truth, as it has done to the abandon- 
ment of many false opinions. In other subjects, we cannot, from 
the nature of the case, advance beyond mere opinion. When- 
ever we judge about variable things, as the future actions of men, 
the best course of conduct for ourselves under doubtful circum- 
stances, historical facts about which there is conflicting testi- 
mony, we can but form & problematical judgment, and must admit 
the possibility of error at the moment of making our decision. 

"The assertive judgment is one of which we are fully per- 
suaded ourselves, but cannot give grounds for our belief that 
shall compel men in general to coincide with us. It is there- 
fore subjectively, but not objectively, certain. It commends itself 
to our moral nature, and in so far as other men are of the 
same disposition, they will accept it likewise. 

u The demonstrative judgment is both subjectively and objec- 
tively true. It may either be certain in itself, as a mathematical 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 275 

JCT>OMENT— 

axiom is, or capable of proof by means of other judgments, as 
the theories of mathematics and the laws of physical science." 
— Thomson, Outline of Laws of Thought, pp. 304-6. 

Port Royal definition : — " Judgment is that operation of the 
mind through which, joining different ideas together, it affirms 
or denies the one or the other ; as when, for instance, having 
the ideas of the earth and roundness, it affirms or denies that 
the earth is round." 

When expressed in words a judgment is called a proposition. 
According to Mr. Locke, judgment implies the comparison of 
two or more ideas. But Dr. Reid says he applies the word 
judgment to every determination of the mind concerning what 
is true or false, and shows that many of these determinations 
are simple and primitive beliefs (not the result of comparing 
two or more ideas), accompanying the exercise of all our 
faculties, judgments of nature, the spontaneous product of 
intelligence. — Intell. Pow., essay vi., chap. 1. 

Chap. 4. — " One of the most important distinctions of our 
judgments is, that some of them are intuitive, others grounded 
on argument." 

In his Inquiry, chap. 2, sect. 4, he shows that judgment and 
belief, so far from arising from the comparison of ideas, in some 
cases precede even simple apprehension. 

The same view has been taken by Adolphe Gamier, in his 
Traite des Facultes de Fame, 3 torn., 8vo, Paris, 1852. 
Judgments, Analytic, Synthetic, and Tautologons. — u Some 
judgments are merely explanatory of their subject, having for 
their predicate a conception which it fairly implies, to all who 
know and can define its nature. They are called analytic 
judgments because they unfold the meaning of the subject, 
without determining anything new concerning it. If we say 
that c all triangles have three sides,' the judgment is analytic ; 
because having three sides is always implied in a right notion 
of a triangle. Such judgments, as declaring the nature or essence 
of the subject, have been called 4 essential propositions.' 

11 Judgments of another class attribute to the subject some- 
thing not directly implied in it, and thus increase our know- 
ledge. They are called synthetic, from placing together two 



276 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY, 

JUDGMENT- 

notions not hitherto associated. ; All bodies possess power of 
attraction ' is a synthetic judgment, because we can think of 
bodies without thinking of attraction as one of their immediate 
primary attributes. 

4i We must distinguish between analytic and tautologous 
judgments. Whilst the analytic display the meaning of the 
subject, and put the same matter in a new form, the tautolo- 
gous only repeat the subject, and give us the same matter in 
the same form, as c whatever is, is.' * A spirit is a spirit.' 

"It is a misnomer to call analytic judgments identical pro- 
positions. — Mill, Log., b. L, chap. 6. ' Every man is a living 
creature ' would not be an identical proposition unless 4 living 
creature ' denoted the same as c man ; ' whereas it is far more 
extensive. Locke understands by identical propositions only 
such as are tautologous (b. iv., ch. 8, 3)." — Thomson, Outline 
of Laws of Thought, pp. 194, 195. 
JURISPRHOENCE (jurisprudential the science of rights). — 
Some refer the Latin word jus to jussum, the supine of the 
verb jubeo, to order or enact. Others refer it to justum, that 
which is just and right. But as right is, or ought to be, the 
foundation of positive law, a thing is jussum, quia justum est- 
made law because it was antecedently just and right. 

Jurisprudence is the science of rights in accordance with 
positive law. It is distinguished into universal and particular. 
u The former relates to the science of law in general, and 
investigates the principles which are common to all positive 
systems of law, apart from the local, partial, and accidental 
circumstances and peculiarities by which these systems respec- 
tively are distinguished from one another. Particular juris- 
prudence treats of the laws of particular states ; which laws are, 
or at least profess to be, the rules and principles of universal 
jurisprudence itself, specifically developed and applied." 

There is a close connection between jurisprudence and 
morality, so close that it is difficult to determine precisely the 
respective limits of each. Both rest upon the great law of 
right and wrong as made known by the light of nature. But 
while morality enjoins obedience to that law in all its extent, 
jurisprudence exacts obedience to it only in so far as the law 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 277 

JURISPRUDENCE— 

of na/ture has been recognized in the law of nations or the 
positive institutions of society. Morality is, therefore, more 
extensive than jurisprudence. Morality has equal reference 
to the whole of human duty. Jurisprudence has special 
reference to social duty. All social duty as enjoined by the 
light of nature — whether included under justice or benevolence 
— belongs to morality. Jurisprudence treats chiefly or almost 
exclusively of duties of justice, which have been made the 
subject of positive law ; which duties of benevolence cannot 
well be. The rules of morality as such, are enforced merely 
bj the law within ; but in so far as they have been adopted by 
jurisprudence, they can be enforced by external law. The 
moralist appeals to our sense of duty, the jurist to a sense of 
authority or law. " As the sense of duty is the sense of 
moral necessity simply, and excluding the sense of physical 
(or external) compulsion, so the sense of law is the sense of 
the same necessity, in combination with the notion of physical 
(or external) compulsion in aid of its requirements." — Foster. 
Elements of Jurisprudence, p. 39. 

The difference between morality and jurisprudence as to 
extent of range, may be illustrated by the difference of signi- 
fication between the word right, when used as an adjective, 
and when used as a substantive. Morality contemplates all 
that is right in action and disposition. Jurisprudence con- 
templates only that which one man has a right to from 
another. 4i The adjective right" says Dr. Whewell (Elements 
of Morality, ISTo. 84), "has a much wider signification than 
the substantive right. Everything is right which is conformable 
to the supreme rule of human action ; but that only is a right 
which, being conformable to the supreme rule, is realized in 
society and vested in a particular person. Hence the two 
words may often be properly opposed. We may say, that, a 
poor man has no right to relief ; but it is right he should have 
it. A rich man has a right to destroy the harvest of his fields ; 
but to do so would not be right." So that the sphere of morality 
is wider than that of jurisprudence, — the former embracing all 
that is right, the latter only particular rights realized or vested 
in particular persons. 



278 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

JURISPRUDENCE— 

Morality and jurisprudence differ also in the immediate 
ground of obligation. Morality enjoins us to do what is right, 
because it is right. Jurisprudence enjoins us to give to others 
their right, with ultimate reference, no doubt, to the truth 
made known to us by the light of nature, that we are morally 
bound to do so ; but, appealing more directly to the fact, that 
our doing so can be demanded by our neighbour, and that his 
demand will be enforced by the authority of positive law. 
And this difference between the immediate ground of obli- 
gation in matters of morality and matters of jurisprudence, 
gives rise to a difference of meaning in the use of some words 
which are generally employed as synonymous. For example, 
if regard be had to the difference between morality and juris- 
prudence, duty is a word of wider signification than obligation ; 
just as right, the adjective, is of wider signification than right, 
the substantive. It is my duty to do what is right. I am 
under obligation to give another man his right. A similar shade 
of difference in meaning may be noticed in reference to the 
words ought and obliged. I ought to do my duty; I am 
obliged to give a man his right. I am not obliged to relieve a 
distressed person, but I ought to do so. 

These distinctions are sometimes explained by saying, that 
what is enjoined by jurisprudence is of perfect obligation, and 
what is enjoined only by morality is of imperfect obligation, — 
that is, that we may or may not do what our conscience dic- 
tates, but that we can be compelled to do what positive law 
demands. But these phrases of perfect and imperfect obli- 
gation are objectionable, in so far as they tend to represent the 
obligations of morality as inferior to those of jurisprudence — 
the dictates of conscience as of less authority than the enact- 
ments of law — whereas the latter rest upon the former, and the 
law of nations derives its binding force from the law of nature. 

Grotius, De Jure Belli et Pads; Puffendorff, Be Officio 
Hominis et Civis ; Leibnitz, Jurisprudential Montesquieu, 
Spirit of Laws ; Burlamaqui, Principles of Natural Law ; 
Rutherforth, Institutes of Natural Law; Mackintosh, Dis- 
course of the Law of Nature and of Nations ; Lerminier, Sur le 
Droit. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 279 

JUSTICE (lixotioavvYi, justitia), is one of the four cardinal virtues. 
It consists, according to Cicero {De Finibus, lib. v., cap. 23), 
in suo cuique tribuendo, in according to every one his right. 
By the Pythagoreans, and also by Plato, it was regarded as 
including all human virtue or duty. The word righteousness 
is used in our translation of the Scripture in a like extensive 
signification. As opposed to equity, justice (to vopnxou) means 
doing merely what positive law requires, while equity {to 
i'oov) means doing what is fair and right in the circumstances 
of every particular case. Justice is not founded in law, as 
Hobbes and others hold, but in our idea of what is right. 
And laws are just or unjust in so far as they do or do not 
conform to that idea. 

" To say that there is nothing just nor unjust but what is com- 
manded or prohibited by positive laws," remarks Montesquieu 
{Spirit of Laios, book i., chap. 1), " is like saying that the 
radii of a circle were not equal till you had drawn the cir- 
cumference." 

Justice may be distinguished as ethical, economical, and 
political. The first consists in doing justice between man and 
man as men ; the second, in doing justice between the mem- 
bers of a family or household ; and the third, in doing justice 
between the members of a community or commonwealth. 
These distinctions are taken by More in his Enchiridion Ethi- 
cum, and are adopted by Grove in his Moral Philosophy. 

Plato's Republic contains a delineation of justice. — Aristotle, 
Ethic, lib. v. ; Cicero, De Finibus. 

Horace gives the idea of a just or good man. — Epist., lib. i., 
16, 40. — V. Right, Duty, Equity. 



KABALA. — In Hebrew kabal signifies '* to receive ; " masora " to 
hand down." u The Kabalists believe that God has expressly 
committed his mysteries to certain chosen persons, and that 
they themselves have received those mysteries in trust, still 
further to hand them down to worthy recipients." — Etheridge, 
Heb. Liter., p. 293. 

The origin of the kabala has been carried back to Moses, 



, 



280 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

KABALA- 

and even to Adam. The numerous allusions to it in the 
Mishna and Gemara, show, that under the Tanaim, a certain 
philosophy, or religious metaphysic, was secretly taught, and 
that this system of esoteric teaching related especially to the 
Creation and the Godhead. So early as A.x>. 189, the time of 
the Mishna redaction, it was recognized as an established theo- 
sophy, the privilege of select disciples. Two works of the 
Mishnaic period are still extant in authentic and complete form, 
viz., Sepher Tetsira and the Zohar, The Tcabala, considered 
as a constructed science, is theoretical and practical. The 
practical department comprises a symbolical apparatus, and 
rules for the use of it. The theoretical consists of two parts — . 
the cosrnogonic, relating to the visible universe, and the theo- 
gonic and pneumatological, relating to the spiritual world and 
the perfections of the Divine nature. Pantheism is the foun- 
dation of both. The universe is a revelation of the Infinite— 
an immanent effect of His ever active power and presence. 
Towards the end of the fifteenth century the Tcabala was 
adopted by several Christian mystics. Raymond Lully, 
Reuchlin, Henry More, and others paid much attention to it. 

Keuchlin, De Arte Cabalistica, fol., Hagen, 1517 ; De Verba 
Mirifico, fol., Basil, 1494; Athanasius Kircher, (Edipus 
(Egyptiacus, fol., Bom., 1652 ; Henry More, Cabbala, fol., 
Lond., 1662 ; Ad. Franck, La Kabbale, 8vo, Paris, 1843 ; 
Etheridge, Hebrew Literature, 8vo, Lond., 1856 ; Picus (J, 
Paris.), Cabalistarum Selectiora Obscurioraque Dogmata^ 12mo 3 
Venet., 1569. 
MLNOWIiEDCHE (yvojffig, cognitio), 

. ... " Learning dwells 
In heads replete with thoughts of other men, 
I Knowledge in minds attentive to their own." 

ct Knowledges (or cognitions), in common use with Bacon 
and our English philosophers, till after the time of Locke, 
ought not to be discarded. It is, however, unnoticed by any 
English lexicographer." — Sir William Hamilton, Relays Works, 
note a, sect. 5, p. 763. 

u Knowledge is the perception of the connection and agree- 
ment, or disagreement and repugnancy of any of our ideas. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 281 

KNOWLEDGE- 

Where this perception is, there is knowledge ; and where it is 
not, then, though we may fancy, guess, or believe, yet we 
always come short of knowledge." — Locke, Essay on Hum. 
Understand., book iv., chap. 1. And in chap. 14, he says, 
" The mind has two faculties conversant about truth and false- 
hood. First, knowledge, whereby it certainly perceives, and is 
undoubtedly satisfied of the agreement or disagreement of any 
ideas. Secondly, judgment, which is the putting ideas together, 
or separating them from one another in the mind, when their 
certain agreement or disagreement is not perceived, but pre- 
sumed to be so." Knowledge is here opposed to opinion. But 
judgment is the faculty by which we attain to certainty, as well 
as to opinion, " And," says Dr. Eeid '{Intell. Pow., essay 
iv., chap 3), " I know no authority, besides that of Mr. Locke, 
for calling knowledge a faculty, any more than for calling 
opinion a faculty." 

" Knowledge implies three things, — 1st, Firm Belief; 2d, 
Of what is true ; 3d, On sufficient grounds. If any one, e. g., is 
in doubt respecting one of Euclid's demonstrations, he cannot 
be said to know the proposition proved by it ; if, again, he is 
fully convinced of anything that is not true, he is mistaken in 
supposing himself to know it ; lastly, if two persons are each 
fully confident, one, that the moon is inhabited, and the other, 
that it is not (though one of these opinions must be true), 
neither of them could properly be said to know the truth, since 
he cannot have sufficient proof of it." — Whately, Log., book 
iv., chap 2, § 2, note. 

Knowledge supposes three terms: a being who knows, an 
object known, and a relation determined between the knowing 
being and the known object. This relation properly constitutes 
knowledge. 

But this relation may not be exact, in conformity with the 
nature of things ; knowledge is not truth. Knowledge is a sub- 
jective conception — a relative state of the human mind; it 
resides in the relation, essentially ideal, of our thought and it* 
object. Truth, on the contrary, is the reality itself, the reality 
ontological and absolute, considered in their absolute relations 
with intelligence, and independent of our personal conceptions. 



282 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

KNOWLEDGE- 

Truth has its source in God ; knowledge proceeds from man. 
Knowledge is true and perfect from the moment that our con- 
ception is really conformable to that which is— from the moment 
that our thought has seized the reality. And, in this view, 
truth may be defined to be the conformity of our thought with 
the nature of its object. 

But truth is not yet certitude. It may exist in itself without 
being acquired by the human mind, without existing actually 
for us. It does not become certain to us till we have acquired 
it by the employment of method. Certitude is thus truth 
brought methodically to the human intelligence, — that is, 
conducted from principle to principle, to a point which is 
evident of itself. If such a point exist, it is plain that we 
can attain to all the truths which attach themselves to it 
directly or indirectly ; and that we may have of these truths, 
howsoever remote, a certainty as complete as that of the point 
of departure. 

Certitude, then, in its last analysis, is the relation of truth 
to knowledge, the relation of man to God, of ontology to 
psychology. When the human intelligence, making its spring, 
has seized divine truth, in identifying itself with the reality, it 
ought then, in order to finish its work, to return upon itself, to 
individualize the truth in us ; and from this individualization re- 
sults the certitude which becomes, in some sort, personal, as know- 
ledge ; all the while preserving the impersonal nature of truth. 

Certitude then reposes upon two points of support, the 
one subjective — man or the human consciousness ; the other 
objective and absolute — the Supreme Being. God and con- 
sciousness are the two arbiters of certitude. — Tiberghien, 
Essai des Connais. Hum., p. 34. 

M The schoolmen divided all human knowledge into two 
species, cognitio intuitiva, and cognitio abstractiva. By intui- 
tive knowledge they signified that which we gain by an 
immediate presentation of the real individual object ; by 
abstractive, that which we gain and hold through the medium 
of a general term ; the one being, in modern language, a 
perception, the other a concept." — Morell, Psychology, p. 158. 
V. Abstractive. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 283 

KNOWLEDGE- 

Leibnitz took a distinction between knowledge as in- 
tuitive or symbolical. When I behold a triangle actually 
delineated, and think of it as a figure with three sides and 
three angles, &c, according to the idea of it in my mind, my 
knowledge is intuitive. But when I use the word triangle, and 
know what it means without explicating all that is contained 
in the idea of it, my knovjledge is blind or symbolical. — 
Leibnitz, De Cognitione, &c. ; Wolf, Psychol. Empir., sect. 
286, 289. 
Knowledge as Immediate and Presentative or Intuitive — and 
as Mediate and Representative or Remote. 

U A thing is known immediately or proximately, when we 
cognize it in itself; mediately or remotely, when we cognize it 
in or through something numerically different from itself. Im- 
mediate cognition, thus the knowledge of a thing in itself, 
involves the fact of its existence ; mediate cognition, thus the 
knowledge of a thing in or through something not itself, 
involves only the possibility of its existence. 

" An immediate cognition, inasmuch as the thing known 
is itself presented to observation, may be called a presentative ; 
and inasmuch as the thing presented is, as it were, viewed by 
the mind face to face, may be called an intuitive cognition. 
A mediate cognition, inasmuch as the thing known is held up 
or mirrored to the mind in a vicarious representation, may be 
called a representative cognition. 

u A thing known is an object of knowledge. 

" In a presentative or immediate cognition there is one sole 
object ; the thing (immediately) known and the thing existing 
being one and the same. In a representative or mediate 
cognition there may be discriminated two objects; the thing 
(immediately) known and the thing existing being numerically 
different. 

" A thing known in itself is the (sole) presentative or intui- 
tive object of knowledge, or the (sole) object of a presentative 
or intuitive knowledge. A thing known in and through some- 
thing else is the primary, mediate, remote, real, existent, or 
represented object of (mediate) knowledge — objectum quod ; 
and a thing through which something else is known is th« 



284 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

KNOWLEDGE— 

secondary, immediate, proximate, ideal, vicarious, or represen- 
tative object of (mediate) knowledge — objectum quo or per 
quod. The former may likewise be styled — objectum entita- 
tivum." — Sir W. Hamilton, Reid's Works, note b, sect. 1. 

Knowledge, in respect of the mode in which it is obtained, 
is intuitive or discursive — intuitive when things are seen in 
themselves by the mind, or when objects are so clearly 
exhibited that there is no need of reasoning to perceive 
them — as, a whole is greater than any of its parts — discursive 
when objects are perceived by means of reasoning, as, the 
sum of the angles of a triangle is equal to two right angles. 
In respect of its strength, knowledge is certain or probable. 
If we attend to the degrees or ends of knowledge, it is either 
science, or art, or experience, or opinion, or belief — q. v. 

" Knowledge is not a couch whereon to rest a searching and 
reckless spirit, or a terrace for a wandering and variable mind 
to walk up and down with a fair prospect, or a tower of state 
for a proud mind to raise itself upon, or a fort or commanding 
ground for strife and contention, or a shop for profit or sale ; 
but a rich storehouse for the glory of the Creator, and the 
relief of man's estate." — Bacon. — V. Certainty, Truth, 
Wisdom. 



LANGUAGE. — " The ends of language in our discourse with 
others are chiefly these three : first, to make known one man's 
thoughts or ideas to another ; secondly, to do it with as much 
ease and quickness as is possible ; and thirdly, thereby to 
convey knowledge of things." — Locke, Essay on Hum. Under- 
stand., book iii., ch. 10. 

Language has been thus divided by Mons. Duval-Jouve, 
Logic, p. 201 : — 

/ -ivjafn^ci {Absolute— Cries and Gestures. 
i natural ^Conventional— Speech. 
Languages are - r Absolute— Painting, Sculpture. 

(_ Artificial < Conventional — Emblems, Telegraphic Signs, 
( Hieroglyphics, Writing. 

Reid, Inquiry, chap, ii., sect. 2. — V. Signs. 

LAUGHTER is the act of expressing our sense of the ridiculous. 

This act, or rather the sense of the ridiculous which prompts 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 285 

LAUGHTER- 

it, has been thought peculiar to man, as that which distin- 
guishes him from the inferior animals.* — Hutcheson, Essay on 
Laughter; Beattie, Essay on Laughter and Ludicrous Com- 
position; Akenside, Pleasures of Irnagin., book iii., Spectator, 
Nos. 47 and 249. 
I.AW comes from the Anglo-Saxon verb signifying " to lay down/' 

U A11 things that are have some operation not violent or 
casual. That which doth assign unto each thing the kind, that 
which doth moderate the force and power, that which doth 
appoint the form and measure of working, the same we term a 
law" — Hooker, Eccles. Pol., book i., sect 2. 

" Laws in their most extended signification are the necessary- 
relations arising from the nature of things ; and, in this sense, 
all beings have their laws, the Deity has his laws, the material 
world has its laws, superior intelligences have their laws, the 
beasts have their laws, and man has his laws." — Montesquieu, 
Spirit of Laws, book i., ch. 1. 

Thus understood, the word comprehends the laws of the 
physical, metaphysical, and moral universe. Its primary signi- 
fication was that of a command or a prohibition, addressed by 
one having authority to those who had power to do or not to 
do. There are in this sense laws of society, laws of morality, 
and laws of religion — each resting upon their proper authority. 
But the word has been transferred into the whole philosophy 
of being and knowing. And when a fact frequently observed 
recurs invariably under the same circumstances, we compare it 
to an act which has been prescribed, to an order which has 
been established, and say it recurs according to a law. On the 
analogy between political laws or laws proper, and those which 
are called metaphorically laws of nature, see Lindley, Intro- 
duction to Jurisprudence, App., p. 1. 

Austin, Province of Jurisprudence Determined, p. 186. 
Law and Cause. 

The word law expresses the constant and regular order 
according to which an energy or agent operates. It may thus 

* The ludicrous pranks of the puppy and the kitten make this doubtful; and Mon- 
taigne said he was not sure whether his favourite cat might not sometimes be laughing 
as much at him as with him. 



286 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

LAW— 

be distinguished from cause— the latter denoting efficiency, the 
former denoting the mode according to which efficiency is de- 
veloped. " It is a perversion of language," says Paley (Nat. 
Theol., ch. 1), "to assign any law, as the efficient, operative 
cause of anything. A law presupposes an agent; this is only 
the mode, according to which an agent proceeds ; it implies a 
power ; for it is the order according to which that power acts. 
Without this agent, without this power, which are both dis- 
tinct from itself, the law does nothing, is nothing." To the 
same purpose Dr. Reid has said, " The laws of nature are the 
rules according to which effects are produced ; but there must 
be a cause which operates according to these rules. The rules 
of navigation never steered a ship, nor the law of gravity never 
moved a planet." 

" Those who go about to attribute the origination of man- 
kind (or any other effect) to a bare order or law of nature, as 
the primitive effecter thereof, speak that which is perfectly 
irrational and unintelligible ; for although a law or rule is the 
method and order by which an intelligent being may act, yet a 
law, or rule, or order, is a dead, unactive, uneffective, thing 
of itself, without an agent that useth it, and exerciseth it as 
his rule and method of action. What would a law signify in 
a kingdom or state, unless there were some person or society 
of men that did exercise and execute, and judge, and deter- 
mine, and act by it, or according to it?" — Hale, Prim. Origin., 
chap. 7, sect. 4. 

To maintain that the world is governed by laws, without 
ascending to the superior reason of these laws — not to recog- 
nize that every law implies a legislator and executor, an agent 
to put it in force, is to stop half-way ; it is to hypostatize these 
laws, to make beings of them, and to imagine fabulous divinities 
in ignoring the only God who is the source of all laws, and who 
governs by them all that lives in the universe. — See Tiberghien, 
Essai des Connais. Hum., p. 743. 

" A law supposes an agent and a power ; for it is the mode, 
according to which the agent proceeds, the order according to 
which the power acts. Without the presence of such an agent, 
of such a power, conscious of the relations on which the law 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 287 

depends, producing the effects which the law prescribes, the 
law can have no efficacy, no existence. Hence we infer, that 
the intelligence by which the law is ordained, the power by 
which it is put into action, must be present at all times and 
in all places, where the effects of the law occur ; that thus the 
knowledge and the agency of the Divine Being pervade every 
portion of the universe, producing all action and passion, all 
permanence and change. The laws of matter are the laws 
which he, in his wisdom, prescribes to his own acts ; his 
universal presence is the necessary condition of any course of 
events ; his universal agency, the only organ of any efficient 
force." — Whewell, Astronomy, p. 361. 
liaw, Physical, Mental, Moral, Political, 

Laws may acquire different names from the difference in 
the agents or energies which operate according to them. A 
stone when thrown up into the air rises to a height pro- 
portional to the force with which it is thrown, and then 
falls to the ground by its own gravity. This takes place 
according to physical laws, or what are commonly called 
laws of nature.— See M'Cosh, Meth. of Div. Govern., b. ii., 
chap. 1. 

" Those principles and faculties are the general laws of our 
constitution, and hold the same place in the philosophy of 
mind that the general laws we investigate in physics hold in 
that branch of science." — Stewart, Elements, part i., Introd. 
When an impression has been made upon a bodily organ a 
state of sensation follows in the mind. And when a state of 
sensation has been long continued or often repeated it comes 
to be less sensibly felt. These are mental laws. We have a 
faculty of memory by which the objects of former conscious- 
ness are recalled ; and this faculty operates according to the 
laws of association. 

Moral laws are derived from the nature and will of God, 
and the character and condition of man, and may be under- 
stood and adopted by man, as a being endowed with intelli- 
gence and will, to be the rules by which to regulate his actions. 
It is right to speak the truth. Gratitude should be cherished. 
These things are in accordance with the nature and condition 



288 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

LAW- 

of man, and with the will of God — that is, they are in accordance 
with the moral law of conscience and of revelation. 

Political laws are prohibitions or injunctions "promulgated 
by those having authority to do so, and may be obeyed or 
disobeyed ; but the disobedience of them implies punish- 
ment. 

" The intent or purpose of a law is wholly different from 
the motives or grounds of the law. The former is its practical 
end or effect ; the latter, the pre-existing circumstances which 
suggested and caused its enactment.* For example, the 
existence of a famine in a country may tend to the enactment 
of a poor law. In this case the famine is the motive or ground 
of the law ; and the relief of the poor its intent or purpose. 
The one is its positive cause, the latter its desired effect." — 
Sir G. C. Lewis, Method of Observ. in Politics, ch. 12, sect. 6. 

In reference to the moral law, Hobbes and his followers 
have overlooked the difference between a law and the principle 
of the law. An action is not right merely in consequence of a 
law declaring it to be so. But the declaration of the law pro- 
ceeds upon the antecedent rightness of the action. 
Law and Form, u though correlative terms, must not, in strict 
accuracy, be used as synonymous. The former is used properly 
with reference to an operation ; the latter with reference to its 
product. Conceiving, judging, reasoning, are subject to certain 
laws; concepts, judgments, syllogisms, exhibit certain for ms." — 
Mansel, Prolegom. Log., p. 240. 
liAW (Empirical). — " Scientific inquirers give the name of empi- 
rical laws to those uniformities which observation or experi- 
ment has shown to exist, but on which they hesitate to rely 
in cases varying much from those which have been actually 
observed, for want of 'seeing any reason why such a law should 
exist. It is implied, therefore, in the notion of an empirical 

* Suarez {Be Legibns, iii.,' 20, sect. 2) says, " Sine dubio in animo legislatoris hsec 
duo distincta sunt, scilicet voluntas seu intentio ejus, secundum quam vult prsecipere. 
et ratio, ob quam movetur." 

The ratio legis and the mens legis are distinguished by Grotius (J. B. et P., ii., 16, 
sect. 8) with Barbeyrac's notes; and by Puffendorflf (v., 12, sect. 10). The purpose of a 
law and its motive have often been confounded under the general term ratio legis— See 
Savigny, System des Rechts, vol. i., pp. 216-224. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 289 

LAW— 

law, that it is not an ultimate law ; that if true at all, its truth 
is capable of being, and requires to be, accounted for. It is a 
derivative law, the derivation of which is not yet known. To 
state the explanation, the why of the empirical law, would be 
to state the laws from which it is derived ; the ultimate causes 
on which it is contingent. And if we knew these, we should 
also know what are its limits ; under what conditions it would 
cease to be fulfilled." — Mill, Log., b. iii., chap. 16. 

As instances of empirical laws he gives the local laws of the 
flux and reflux of the tides in different places ; the succession 
of certain kinds of weather to certain appearances of the sky, 
&c. But these do not deserve to be called laws. 
LEMMA (from Kapfioiva), to take for granted, to assume). — This 
term is used to denote a preliminary proposition, which, while 
it has no direct relation to the point to be proved, yet serves 
to pave the way for the proof. In Logic, a premiss taken for 
granted is sometimes called a lemma. To prove some proposi- 
tion in mechanics, some of the propositions in geometry may 
be taken as lemmata. 
LIBERTARIAN. — " I believe he (Dr. Crombie, that is) may 
claim the merit of adding the word Libertarian to the English 
language, as Priestley added that of Necessarian.'''' — Corre- 
spondence of Dr. Reid, p. 88. 

Both words have reference to the questions concerning 
liberty and necessity, in moral agency. 
LIBERTY of the WILL or LIBERTY of a MORAL AGENT. 

u The idea of liberty is the idea of a power in any agent to do 
or forbear any particular action, according to the determina- 
tion or thought of the mind, whereby either of them is pre- 
ferred to the other." — Locke, Essay on Hum. Understand., b. 
ii., ch. 21, sect. 8. 

u By the liberty of a moral agent, I understand a power over 
the determinations of his own will. If, in any action, he had 
power to will what he did, or not to will it, in that action he 
is free. But if, in every voluntary action, the determination of 
his will be the necessary consequence of something involuntary 
in the state of his mind, or of something in his external cir- 
cumstances, he is not free ; he has not what I call the liberty 
V 



290 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

LIBEETY- 

of a moral agent, but is subject to necessity."— Reid, Act. Pow., 
essay iv., ch. 1. 

It has been common to distinguish liberty into freedom from 
co-action, and freedom from necessity. 

Freedom from co-action implies, on the one hand, the absence 
of all impediment or restraint, and, on the other hand, the 
absence of all compulsion or violence. If we are prevented 
from doing what is in our power, when we desire and will to do 
it, or, if we are compelled to do it, when we desire and will not 
to do it, we are not free from co-action. This general explanation 
of freedom agrees equally with bodily freedom, mental freedom, 
and moral freedom. Indeed, although it is common to make a 
distinction between these, there is no difference, except what is 
denoted by the different epithets introduced. We have bodily 
freedom, when our body is not subjected to restraint or com- 
pulsion — mental freedom, when no impediment or violence 
prevents us from duly exercising our powers of mind — and moral 
freedom, when our moral principles and feelings are allowed 
to operate within the sphere which has been assigned to them. 
Now it is with freedom regarded as moral that we have here 
to do — it is with freedom as the attribute of a being who pos- 
sesses a moral nature, and who exerts the active power which 
belongs to him, in the light of reason, and under a sense of 
responsibility. Liberty of this kind is called freedom from 
necessity. 

Freedom from necessity is also called liberty of election, or 
power to choose, and implies freedom from anything invincibly 
determining a moral agent. It has been distinguished into 
liberty of contrariety, or the power of determining to do either 
of two actions which are contrary, as right or wrong, good or 
evil ; and liberty of contradiction, or the power of determining 
to do either of two actions which are contradictory, as to walk 
or to sit still, to walk in one direction or in another. 

Freedom from necessity \s sometimes also called liberty of 
indifference, because, before he makes his election, the agent 
has not determined in favour of one action more than another. 
Liberty of indifference,however, does not mean, as some would 
have it, liberty of equilibrium, or that the agent has no more 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 291 

LIBERTY- 

inclination towards one action or one mode of action than 
towards another ; for although he may have motives prompting 
more urgently to one action or course of action, he still has 
liberty of election, if he has the power of determining in favour 
of another action or another course of action. Still less can the 
phrase liberty of indifference be understood as denoting a power 
to determine in opposition to all motives, or in absence of any 
motive. A being with liberty of indifference in the former of these 
, senses would not be a reasonable being ; and an action done 
without a motive is an action done without an end in view, 
that is, without intention or design, and, in that respect, could 
not be called a moral action, though done by a moral agent. 

Liberty of will may be viewed, 1st, in respect to the object, 
and 2d, in respect of the action. In both respects it may be 
liberty of, 1st, contrariety, or 2d, of contradiction. 

Liberty of contrariety in respect of the object is when the will 
is indifferent to any object and to its opposite or contrary — as 
when a man is free, for the sake of health, to take hot water or 
cold water. Liberty of contradiction is when the will is indif- 
ferent to any object, and to its opposite or contradictory — as 
walking and not walking. 

In respect of the act of will, there is liberty of contrariety, 
when the will is indifferent as to contrary actions concerning 
the same particular object, — as to choose or reject some parti- 
cular good. There is liberty of contradiction, when the will is 
free not to contrary action, but to act or not to act, that is, to 
will or not to will, to exercise or suspend volition. 

Liberty has also been distinguished into, 1st, liberty of spe- 
cif cation, and 2d, liberty of exercise. The former may be said 
to coincide with liberty of contrariety, and the latter with 
liberty of contradiction. — Baronius, Metaphys., p. 96. 
LIFE belongs to organized bodies, that is, animals and vegetables. 
Birth and development, decay and death, are peculiar to living 
bodies. Is there a vital principle, distinct on the one hand 
from matter and its forces, and on the other, from mind and 
its energies ? According to Descartes, Borelli, Boerhiiave, and 
others, the phenomena of living bodies may be explained by 
the mechanical and chemical forces belonging to matter. 



292 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

According to Bichat, there is nothing in common — but rather an 
antagonism — between the forces of dead matter and the phe- 
nomena of life, which he defines to be " the sum of functions 
which resist death." Bichat and his followers are called 
Organicists. Barthez and others hold that there is a vital 
principle distinct from the organization of living bodies, which 
directs all their acts and functions which are only vital, that is, 
without feeling or thought. Their doctrine is Vitalism. The 
older doctrine of Stahl was called Animism, according to which 
the soul, or anima mundi, presides not only over the functions 
of the sensibility and thought but over all the functions and 
actions of the living economy. 

Are life and sensibility two things essentially distinct, or two 
things essentially united ? 

Irritability and Excitability are terms applied to the sensi- 
bility which vegetables manifest to external influences, such as 
light, heat, &c. Bichat ascribed the functions of absorption, 
secretion, circulation, &c, which are not accompanied with 
feeling, to what he called organic sensibility. 

The characteristics of the several kingdoms of nature given 
by Linnseus are the following : — Lapides crescunt ; vegetabilia 
crescunt et vivunt; animalia crescunt vivunt et sentiunt. 

The theories of life and its connection with the phenomena 
of mind are thus classified by Morell, Psychology, p. 77, note: — 

" 1. The chemical theory. This was represented by Sylvius 
in the seventeenth century, who reduced all the phenomena 
of vital action and organization to chemical processes. 2. The 
mechanical theory. This falls to the time when Harvey dis- 
covered the circulation of the blood, and Boerhaave represented 
the human frame as one great hydraulic machine. 3. The 
dynamical theory. Here we have the phenomena of mind 
and of life drawn closely together. The writings of Stahl 
especially show this point of view. He regarded the whole 
man as being the product of certain organic powers, which 
evolve all the various manifestations of human life, from the 
lowest physical processes to the highest intellectual. 4. The 
theory of irritation. This we find more especially amongst the 
French physiologists, such as Bichat, Majendie, and others, who 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 293 

LIFE— 

regard life as being the product of a mere organism, acted 
on by physical stimuli from the world without. 5. The theory 
of evolution. Schultz and others of the German writers of 
the same school, regard life as a regular evolution, created by 
opposing powers in the universe of existence, from the lowest 
forms of the vital functions to the highest spheres of thought 
and activity. To these speculators nature is not a fixed 
reality, but a relation. It is perpetual movement, an unceas- 
ing becoming, a passing from death to life, and from life to 
death. And just as physical life consists in the tension of the 
lower powers of nature, so does mental life consist in that of 
its higher powers. 6. The theory of the Divine ideal. Here, 
Carus, prompted by Schilling's philosophy, has seized the 
ideal side of nature, as well as the real, and united them 
together in his theory of the genesis of the soul, and thus 
connected the whole dynamics of nature with their Divine 
original. 1 '' 

Plato, Timceus ; Aristotle, De Anima, lib. ii., cap. 10 ; 
Descartes, (Euvres, par Cousin, torn. iv. ; Barthez, Bichat, 
Cabanis, and Berard ; Coleridge, Posthumous Essay: Hints 
towards the Formation of a more Comprehensive Theory of 
Life. 

LOGIC (hoywv], T^oyo?, reason, reasoning, language). — The word 
logica was early used in Latin ; while ^ "hoyiKvi and to 
KoyiKov were late in coming into use in Greek. Aristotle 
did not use either of them. His writings which treat of the 
syllogism and of demonstration were entitled Analytics (q. r.) 
The name organon was not given to the collected series of 
his writings upon logic till after the invention of printing. 
The reason of the name is, that logic was regarded as not 
so much a science in itself as the instrument of all science. 
The Epicureans called it koluoviky), the rule by which true 
and false are to be tried. Plato in the Pha3drus, has called 
it a part (pe^og), and in the Parmenides the organ (fyyxvov) 
of philosophy. — See Trendelenburg, Elementa Log. Arist., 
8vo, Basil, 1842, pp. 48, 49. An old division of philosophy 
was into logic, ethics, and physics. But excluding physics, 
philosophy may be regarded as consisting of four parts — 



294 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

I.OGIC— 

viz., psychology, logic, ethics, and metaphysics properly so 
called. 

" Logic is derived from the word (T^oyog), which signifies 
communication of thought usually by speech. It is the name 
which is generally given to the branch of inquiry (be it 
called science or art) in which the act of the mind in reasoning 
is considered, particularly with reference to the connection of 
thought and language." — De Morgan, Formal Logic, ch. 2. 

" We divide logicians into three schools, according as they 
hold words, things, or conceptions, to be the subject of logic ; 
and entitle them respectively, the verbal, the phenomenal, and 
the conceptional." — Chretien, Logical Method, p. 95. 

u When we attend to the procedure of the human intellect 
we soon perceive that it is subject to certain supreme laws 
which are independent of the variable matter of our ideas, 
and which posited in their abstract generality, express the 
absolute and fixed rules not only of the human intellect, but 
of all thought, whatever be the subject which frames it or 
the object which it concerns. To determine those universal 
laws of thought in general, in order that the human mind in 
particular may find in all its researches a means of control, 
and an infallible criterion of the legitimacy of its procedure, 
is the object of logic. At the beginning of the prior analytics, 
Aristotle has laid it down that c the object of logic is demon- 
stration.* 

u Logic is the science of the laws of thought as thought — 
that is, of the necessary conditions to which thought, con- 
sidered in itself, is subject." — Sir W. Hamilton, ReioVs Works \ 
p. 698, note. 

u ^ Logic is the science of the laws of thought.' It is a 
science rather than an art. As the science of the necessary 
laws of thought it is pure. It only gives those principles which 
constitute thought ; and pre-supposes the operation of those 
principles by which we gain the materials for thinking. And 
it is the science of the form or formal laws of thinking, and 
not of the matter" — Thomson, Outline of the Laws of Thought. 
— V. Intention, Notion. 

Others define logic to be the science of the laws of reason- 



VOCABULARY OF E HX, 

LOGIC— 

ir.g. Pr. W- 

application, is --ell as the art of reasoning. So 

far as it institutes an analysis of tl the mind in 

i"c:is ■::::::". i: is s:ri::ly a >:•-: :•:. : ~h : '.:- ?;■ :":•:• is :: investigates 
the principles on which argumentation is 1, and 

furnishes rules to secure the mind & 



L p. IV ** Logic is both a 
iyzing 
tore of argument 

rois. I: is -much 

argunie :- inner 

I Hmfltnn thinks that Pr. 
constructed his 
Hcyt ■ single 

. 

L-4. 

me art 

r both, 



':.: zifiv nianiies: iiself in ::i:nin, ::n 
i reasjnin^s : mi ";.;:'; treats :: t'aes-: nniri ti::; 
:■. -'in, heals. Me:: 

thoughts, is Bn: 

it appei a more properly to psy- 

than :; ." :';. Barthelonty St. Hilaire. who takes this 
s said (Diet des Sciences Philosophy ait. " Logique "). 
ic considered as i 

parts. the coni- 

md in I h cannot be changed: 

•_ . A theory of 

med of pro- 

> connected with one another i .rtain 

iy. a theory of that special and supreme kind 



296 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

I.OOIC— 

of reasoning which is called demonstration, and gives assur- 
ance to the mind of man of the forms of truth, if it be not 
truth itself." 
JLOVE and HATRED are the two genetic or mother passions 
or affections of mind, from which all the others take their 
rise. The former is awakened by the contemplation of some- 
thing which is regarded as good ; and the latter by the con- 
templation of something which is regarded as evil. Hence 
springs a desire to seek the one, and a desire to shun the other ; 
and desire, under its various forms and modifications, may be 
found as an element in all the manifestations of the sensi- 
tivity. 



MACROCOSM and MICROCOSM (pottos, large; fCiK^og, small; 

jcoa t uog, world). 

u As for Paracelsus, certainly he is injurious to man, if (as 
some eminent chemists expound him) he calls a man a micro- 
cosm, because his body is really made up of all the several 
kinds of creatures the macrocosm or greater world consists of, 
and so is but a model or epitome of the universe." — Boyle, 
Works, vol. ii., p. 54. 

Many ancient philosophers regarded the world as an animal, 
consisting like man of a soul and a body. This opinion, 
exaggerated by the mystics, became the theory of the macro- 
cosm and the microcosm, according to which man was an 
epitome of creation, and the universe was man on a grand 
scale. The same principles and powers which were perceived 
in the one were attributed to the other, and while man was 
believed to have a supernatural power over the laws of the 
universe, the phenomena of the universe had an influence on 
the actions and destiny of man. Hence arose Alchemy and 
Astrology, which were united in the Hermetic medicine. Such 
views are fundamentally pantheistic, leading to the belief that 
there is only one substance, manifesting itself in the universe 
by an infinite variety, and concentred in man as in an epitome. 
Yan Helmont, Paracelsus, Robert Fludd, and others held some 
of these views. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 297 

MACROCOSM— 

Dr. Reid has said (Active Pow., essay iii., part i., chap. 
1), " Man has not, without reason, been called an epitome of 
the universe. His body, by which his mind is greatly affected, 
being a part of the material system, is subject to all the laws 
of inanimate matter. During some part of his existence, his 
state is very like that of a vegetable. He rises, by imper- 
ceptible degrees, to the animal, and, at last, to the rational 
life, and has the principles that belong to all." 

" Man is not only a microcosm, in the structure of his body, 
but in the system, too, of his impulses, including all of them 
within him, from the basest to the most sublime." — Harris, 
Philosoph. Arrange., cap. 17. 

6< Man is a living synthesis of the universe." — Tiberghien. 

Cousin (Introd. aux GEuvres Inedites d^Aoelard, p. 127,) has 
given an analysis of a MS. work by Bernard de Chartres, 
entitled Megacosmus et Microcosmus. 
MAGIC (pccyeioi, from f*oiyo$, a Magian). — " It is confessed by all 
of understanding that a magician (according to the Persian 
word) is no other than a studious observer and expounder of 
divine things." — Ealeigh, Hist, of the World, b. i., c. 11, s. 3. 

But while magic was used primarily to denote the study of 
the more sublime parts of knowledge, it came at length to sig- 
nify a science of which the cultivators, by the help of demons or 
departed souls, could perform things miraculous. 

" Natural magic is no other than the absolute perfection of 
natural philosophy." — Raleigh, Hist, of the World, b. i., c. 11, 
s. 2. Baptista Porta has a treatise on it, which was published 
in 1589 and 1591. It is characterized by Bacon (De Augm., 
lib. iii.) as full of credulous and superstitious observations and 
traditions on the sympathies and antipathies and the occult and 
specific qualities of things. Sir D. Brewster has a treatise 
under the same title, but of very different character and con- 
tents, and answering to the definition of Raleigh. Campanella, 
De Sensu Rerum et Magia, 4to, Par., 1637 ; Longinus, Trinon 
Magicum, 12mo, Francf., 1616. 
MAGNANIMITY and EQUANIMITY (magnus, great ; aequus. 
even ; animus, mind), are two words which were much used by 
Cicero and other ancient ethical writers. 



298 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

MAGNANIMITY— 

Magnanimity was described as lifting us above the good and 
evil of this life — so that while the former was not necessary to 
our happiness, the latter could not make us miserable. The 
favourite example of magnanimity, among the Romans, was 
Fabius Maximus, who, amidst the provocation of the enemy 
and the impatience of his countrymen, delayed to give battle 
till he saw how he could do so successfully. 

Equanimity supposes change of state or fortune, and means 
the preservation of an even mind in the midst of vicissitude — 
neither elated unduly by prosperity nor depressed unduly by 
adversity. Equanimity springs from Magnanimity. Indeed 
both these words denote frames or states of mind from which 
special acts of virtue spring — rather than any particular virtue. 
They correspond to the active and passive fortitude of modern 
moralists. 

" Aequam memento rebus in arduis 
Servare mentem, non secus in bonis 
Ab^irisolenti temperatam 
Lsetitia, moriture Delli."— Hor. 



•* Est hie, 

Est ubi vis, animus si te noh deficit aequus."— Hor. 

"True happiness is to no spot confined ; 
If you preserve a firm and equal mind, 
Tis here, 'tis there, 'tis everywhere." 






MANICMEISM (so called from Manes, a Persian philosopher, 
who flourished about the beginning of the third century), is 
the doctrine that there are two eternal principles or powers, 
the one good and the other evil, to which the happiness and 
misery of all beings may be traced. It has been questioned 
whether this doctrine was ever maintained to the extent of 
denying the Divine unity, or that the system of things had 
not an ultimate tendency to good. It is said that the Persians, 
before Manes, maintained dualism so as to give the supremacy 
to the good principle ; and that Manes maintained both to be 
equally eternal and absolute. 

The doctrine of manicJieism was ingrafted upon Christianity 
about the middle of the third century. The Cathari or Albi- 
genses who appeared in the twelfth century are said also to 
have held the doctrine of dualism or ditheism — q. v. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 299 

KAIYICMEISM— 

To refute it we have only to say that if the two opposing 
principles were equal, they would neutralize each other — if 
they were unequal, the stronger would prevail, so that there 
would be nothing but evil, or nothing but good in the world ; 
which is contrary to fact. 

Matter, Hist. Critiq. du Gnosticism, 3 torn., Paris, 1843; 
Beausobre, Hist, du Manicheisme. 
MATERIALISM. — u The materialists maintain that man consists 
of one uniform substance, the object of the senses; and that 
perception, with its modes, is the result, necessary or other- 
wise, of the organization of the brain." — Belsham, Moral 
Philosophy, chap, xi., sect. 1. The doctrine opposed to this is 
spiritualism, or the doctrine that there is a spirit in man, and 
that he has a soul as well as a body. In like manner he who 
maintains that there is but one substance (unisubstancisme), 
and that that substance is matter, is a materialist. And he 
who holds that above and beyond the material frame of the 
universe there is a spirit sustaining and directing it, is a 
spiritualist. The philosopher who admits that there is a spirit 
in man, and a spirit in the universe, is a perfect spiritualist. 
He who denies spirit in man or in the universe, is a perfect 
materialist. But some have been inconsistent enough to admit 
a spirit in man' and deny the existence of God, while others 
have admitted the existence of God and denied the soul of 
man to be spiritual. — V. Immateriality. 

Baxter and Drew have both written on the immateriality of 
the soul. Belsham and Priestley have defended materialism 
without denying the existence of God. 

Priestley, Disquisitions on Matter and Spirit; Three Dis- 
sertations on the Doctrine of Materialism and Philosophical 
Necessity; Price, Letters on Materialism and Philosophical 
Necessity. 

MATHEMATICS (jt.x6yu.oiTix.yi [sc. £7n<rT'/}p,rf\ to. t uoe,^7 u uccrct). 
according to Descartes, treat of order and measures. " Ilia 
omnia tantum, in quibus ordo vel mensura examinatur. ad 
mathesim referri, nee interesse utrum in numeris vel figuris, vel 
astris. vel sonis, aliove quovis objecto talis mensura quarenda 
est. 11 — Reg. ad Direct. Ingenii, Reg. 4. 



300 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

MATHEMATICS- 

Mathematics are either Pure or Mixed. Arithmetic, Geo- 
metry, Algebra, and the Differential and Integral Calculus 
belong to Pure Mathematics. Mixed Mathematics is the 
application of Pure Mathematics to physical science in its 
various departments : Mechanics, Hydrodynamics, Optics, As- 
tronomy, Acoustics, Electricity, Magnetism, &c, are physico- 
mathematical sciences. Among philosophers, Anaximander of 
Miletus, and Pythagoras are called mathematicians. 
MATTER, as opposed to mind or spirit (q.v.), is that which 
occupies space, and with which we become acquainted by 
means of our bodily senses or organs. Everything of which 
we have any knowledge is either matter or mind, i. e., spirit. 
Mind is that which knows and thinks. Matter is that which 
makes itself known by means of the bodily senses. 

" The first form which matter assumes is extension, or length, 
breadth, and thickness — it then becomes body. If body were 
infinite there could be no figure, which is body bounded. But 
body is not physical body, unless it partake of or is constituted 
of one or more of the elements, fire, air, earth, or water. "- 
Monboddo, Ancient Metaphys., b. ii., c. 2. 

According to Descartes the essence of mind is thought, and 
the essence of matter is extension. He said, Give me extension 
and motion, and I shall make the world. Leibnitz said the 
essence of all being, whether mind or matter, is force. Matter 
is an assemblage of simple forces or monads. His system of 
physics may be called dynamical, in opposition to that of 
Newton, which may be called mechanical ; because Leibnitz 
held that the monads possessed a vital or living energy. We 
may explain the phenomena of matter by the movements of 
ether, by gravity and electricity ; but the ultimate reason of 
all movement is a force primitively communicated at creation, 
a force which is everywhere, but which while it is present in 
all bodies is differently limited ; and this force, this virtue or 
power of action is inherent in all substances material and 
spiritual. Created substances received from the creative sub- 
stance not only the faculty to act, but also to exercise their 
activity each after its own manner. See Leibnitz, De Primal 
Philosophice Emendatione et de Notione Substantial, or Nouveau 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 301 

IATTER- 

Sy steme de la Nature et de la Communication des Substances, 
in the Journal des Savans, 1695. On the various hypotheses 
to explain the activity of matter ,"see Stewart, Outlines, part ii., 
ch. 2, sect. 1, and Act. and Mor. Pow., last edit., vol. ii., note a. 

The properties which have been predicated as essential to 
matter are impenetrability, extension, divisibility, inertia, 
weight. To the senses it manifests colour, sound, smell, taste, 
heat, and motion ; and by observation it is discovered to 
possess elasticity, electricity, magnetism, &c. 

Metaphysicians have distinguished the qualities of matter 
into primary and secondary, and have said that our knowledge 
of the former, as of impenetrability and extension, is clear and 
absolute — while our knowledge of the latter, as of sound and 
smell, is obscure and relative. This distinction taken by 
Descartes, adopted by Locke and also by Reid and Stewart, 
was rejected by Kant, according to whom, indeed, all our 
knowledge is relative. And others who do not doubt the 
objective reality of matter, hold that our knowledge of all its 
qualities is the same in kind. See the distinctions precisely 
stated and strenuously upheld by Sir William Hamilton, Reid's 
Works, note d ; and ingeniously controverted by Mons. Emile 
Saisset, in Diet, des Sciences PJiilosoph., art. "Matiere." 
flatter and Form. 

Matter as opposed to form (q. v.) is that elementary consti- 
tuent in composite substances, which appertains in common to 
them all without distinguishing them from one another. Every- 
thing generated or made, whether by nature or art, is generated 
or made out of something else ; and this something else is 
called its subject or matter. Such is iron to the boat, such is 
timber to the boat. Matter void of form was called v'hn 
vpaTv, or, prima materia — (t/Au, means wood. — V. Hylozo- 
ism). Form when united to matter makes it determinate and 
constitutes body — q. v. 

" The term matter is usually applied to whatever is given to 
the artist, and consequently, as given, does not come within 
the province of the art itself to supply. The form is that which 
is given in and through the proper operation of the art. In 
sculpture, the matter is the marble in its rough state as given 



i 



302 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

MATTER- 

to the sculptor ; the form is that which the sculptor in the i 
exercise of his art communicates to it. The distinction between 
matter and /orm in any mental operation is analogous to this. 
The former includes all that is given to, the latter all that is 
given by, the operation. In the division of notions, for ex- 
ample, the generic notion is that given to be divided ; the 
addition of the difference in the art of division constitutes the 
species. And accordingly, Genus is frequently designated by 
logicians the material, Difference, the formal part of the 
species." — Mansel, Prolegom. Log., p. 226. 

Harris, Philosoph. Arrange., chap. iv. ; Monboddo, Ancient 
Metaphys., book ii., chap. 1 ; Reid, Intell. Pow., essay ii., 
chap. 19. — V. Action, Proposition. 
MAXIM (maxima propositio, a proposition of the greatest weight), 
is used by Boethius as synonymous with axiom, or a self- 
evident truth. — Sir Will. Hamilton, Reid's Works, note A, 
sect. 5. It is used in the same way by Locke, Essay on Hum. 
Understand., book iv., chap. 7. " There are a sort of propo- 
sitions, which, under the name of maxims and axioms, have 
passed for principles of science.' 7 u By Kant, maxim was 
employed to designate a subjective principle, theoretical or 
practical, i. e., one not of objective validity, being exclusively 
relative to some interest of the subject. Maxim and regulative 
principle are, in the critical philosophy, opposed to law and 
constitutive principle." 

In Morals, we have Rochefoueald's Maxims. 

In Theology, Fenelon wrote Maxims of the Saints, and Eollin 
made a collection of Maxims drawn from holy writ. 
MEMORY, (from memini, preterite of the obsolete form meneo or 
meno, from the Greek pkvuv, manere, to stay or remain. From 
the contracted form pvua comes ^vv)^>yi, the memory in which 
things remain. Lennep). — u The great Keeper, or Master of 
the Kolls of the soul, a power that can make amends for the 
speed of time, in causing him to leave behind him those things 
which else he would so carry away as if they had not been." — 
Bishop Hall, Righteous Mammon. 

Consciousness testifies that when a thought has once been 
present to the mind, it may again become present to it, with 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 303 

MEMORY- 

the additional consciousness that it has formerly been present 
to it. When this takes place we are said to remember, and the 
faculty of which remembrance is the act is memory. 

Memory implies, — 1. A mode of consciousness experienced. 
2. The retaining or remaining of that mode of consciousness 
so that it may subsequently be revived without the presence 
of its object. 3. The actual revival of that mode of conscious- 
ness; and 4. The recognizing that mode of consciousness as 
having formerly been experienced. 

" The word memory is not employed uniformly in the same 
precise sense ; but it always expresses some modification of 
that faculty, which enables us to treasure up, and preserve for 
future use, the knowledge we acquire ; a faculty which is 
obviously the great foundation of all intellectual improvement, 
and without which no advantage could be derived from the 
most enlarged experience. This faculty implies two things ; a 
capacity of retaining knowledge, and a power of recalling it to 
our thoughts when we have occasion to apply it to use. The 
word memory is sometimes employed to express the capacity, 
and sometimes the power. When we speak of a retentive 
memory, we use it in the former sense ; when of a ready 
memory, in the latter." — Stewart, PMlosopli. of Hum. Mind, 
chap. 6. 

Memory has, and must have, an object ; for he that remem- 
bers must remember something, and that which he remembers 
is the object of memory. It is neither a decaying sense, as 
Hobbes would make it, nor a transformed sensation, as Con- 
dillac would have it to be ; but a distinct and original faculty, 
the phenomena of which cannot be included under those of 
any other power. The objects of memory may be things 
external to us, or internal states and modes of consciousness ; 
and we may remember what we have seen, touched, or tasted ; 
or we may remember a feeling of joy or sorrow which we 
formerly experienced, or a resolution or purpose which we 
previously formed. 

Hobbes would confine memory to objects of sense. He says 
(Hum. Xature, ch. 3, sect. 6), " By the senses, which are 
numbered according to the organs to be five, we take notice 



304 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

MEMORY- 

of the objects without us, and that notice is oar conception 
thereof: but we take notice also, some way or other, of our 
conception, for when the conception of the same thing 
cometh again, we take notice that it is again, that is to say, 
that we have had the same conception before, which is as 
much as to imagine a thing past, which is impossible to the 
sense which is only of things present ; this, therefore, may be 
accounted a sixth sense, but internal ; not external as the 
rest, and is commonly called remembrance.'''' 

Mr. Stewart holds that memory involves u a power of 
recognizing, as former objects of attention, the thoughts 
that from time to time occur to us : a power which is not 
implied in that law of our nature which is called the associa- 
tion of ideas." But the distinction thus taken between 
memory and association is not very consistent with a further 
distinction which he takes between the memory of things and the 
memory of events. (Elements, chap. 6). " In the former case, 
thoughts which have been previously in the mind, may recur 
to us without suggesting the idea of the past, or of any modi- 
fication of time whatever ; as when I repeat over a poem 
which I have got by heart, or when I think of the features of 
an absent friend. In this last instance, indeed, philosophers 
distinguish the act of the mind by the name of conception ; 
but in ordinary discourse, and frequently even in philosophi- 
cal writing, it is considered as an exertion of memory. In 
these and similar cases, it is obvious that the operations of 
this faculty do not necessarily involve the idea of the past. 
The case is different with respect to the memory of events. 
When I think of these, I not only recall to the mind the 
former objects of its thoughts, but I refer the event to a par- 
ticular point of time ; so that, of every such act of memory, the 
idea of the past is a necessary concomitant." Mr. Stewart 
therefore supposes " that the remembrance of a past event is 
not a simple act of the mind ; but that the mind first forms a 
conception of the event, and then judges from circumstances, 
of the period of time to which it is to be referred. But the 
remembrance of a thing is not a simple act of the mind, any 
more than the remembrance of an event. The truth seems to 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 305 

MEMORY— 

be that tilings and events recur to the mind equally unclothed 
or unconnected with the notion of pastness. (See Young, 
Intellect. PhilosopJi., lect. xvi.) And it is not till they are 
recognized as objects of former consciousness that they can 
be said to be remembered. But the recognition is the act 
of the judging faculty. Thoughts which have formerly been 
present to the mind may again become present to it without 
being recognized. Nay, they may be entertained for a time 
as new thoughts, but it is not till they have been recognized 
as objects of former consciousness that they can be regarded 
as remembered thoughts,* so that an act of memory, whether 
of things or events, is by no means a simple act of the mind. 
Indeed, it may be doubted whether in any mental operation 
we can detect any single faculty acting independently of 
others. What we mean by calling them distinct faculties is, 
that each has a separate or peculiar function ; not that that 
function is exercised independently of other faculties. — V. 
Faculty. 

Mr. Locke {Essay on Hum. Understand., b. ii., c. 10), treats 
of retention. u The next faculty of the mind (after perception), 
whereby it makes a further progress towards knowledge, is that 
which I call retention, or the keeping of those simple ideas, 
which from sensation or reflection it hath received. This is 
done two ways : first, by keeping the idea which is brought 
into it for some time actually in view ; which is called contem- 
plation. The other way of retention, is the power to revive 
again in our minds those ideas which, after imprinting, have 
disappeared, or have been as it were laid aside out of sight ; 
and thus we do, when we conceive heat or light, yellow or 
sweet, — the object being removed. This is memory, which is 
as it were the storehouse of our ideas." — V. Retention. 

The circumstances which have a tendency to facilitate or 
insure the retention or the recurrence of anything by the 
memory, are chiefly — Vividness, Repetition, and Attention. 
When an object affects us in a pleasant or in a disagreeable 

* Aristotle {De Memoria et Reminiscentia, cap. 1), has said that memory is always 
accompanied with the notion of time, and that only those animals that have the notion 
of time have memory. 

X 



306 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

MEMORY— 

manner — when it is frequently or familiarly observed — or 
when it is examined with attention and interest, it is more 
easily and surely remembered. 

u The things which are best preserved by the memory" said 
Lord Herbert (De Veritate, p. 156), u are the things which 
please or terrify — which are great or new — to which much 
attention has been paid — or which have been oft repeated, — 
which are apt to the circumstances — or which have many things 
related to them. 11 

The qualities of a good memory are susceptibility, retentive- 
ness, and readiness. 

The common saying that memory and judgment are not 
often found in the same individual, in a high degree, must be 
received with qualification. 

Memory in all its manifestations is very much influenced, 
and guided by what have been called the laws of associa- 
tion — q. v. 

In its first manifestations, memory operates spontaneously, 
and thoughts are allowed to come and go through the mind 
without direction or control. But it comes subsequently to be 
exercised with intention and will ; some thoughts being sought 
and invited, and others being shunned and as far as possible 
excluded. Spontaneous memory is remembrance. Intentional 
memory is recollection or reminiscence. 

The former in Greek is Mvypy, and the latter 'Avapi/wts. 
In both forms, but especially in the latter, we are sensible of 
the influence which association has in regulating the exercise 
of this faculty. 

By memory, we not only retain and recall former knowledge, 
but we also acquire new knowledge. It is by means of memory 
that we have the notion of continued existence or duration ; 
and also the persuasion of our personal identity, amidst all the 
changes of our bodily frame, and all the alterations of our 
temper and habits. 

Memory, in its spontaneous or passive manifestation, is com- 
mon to man with the inferior animals. But Aristotle denied 
that they are capable of recollection or reminiscence, which is a 
kind of reasoning by which we ascend from a present conscious- 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 307 

MEMOBY- 

ness to a former, and from that to a more remote, till the whole 
facts of some case are brought again back to us. And Dr. 
Reid has remarked that the inferior animals do not measure 
time nor possess any distinct knowledge of intervals of time. 
In man memory is the condition of all experience, and conse- 
quently of all progress. 

Memory in its exercises is very dependent upon bodily organs, 
particularly the brain. In persons under fever, or in danger 
of drowning, the brain is preternaturally excited ; and in such 
cases it has been observed that memory becomes more remote 
and far-reaching in its exercise than under ordinary and 
healthy circumstances. Several authentic cases of this kind 
are on record. (See Coleridge, Biograpliia Literaria ; De 
Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater ; and Sir John 
Barrow, Autobiography, p. 398). And hence the question has 
been suggested, whether thought be not absolutely imperish- 
able, or whether every object of former consciousness may not, 
under peculiar circumstances, be liable to be recalled ? 

Aristotle, De Memoria et Reminiscentia ; Beattie, Disserta- 
tions; Reid, Intell, Poiv., essay iii. ; Stewart, Elements, 
chap. 6. 
MEUIORIA TECHNICA, or HENE UIONICS.— These terms are 
applied to artificial methods which have been devised to assist 
the memory. They all rest on the association of ideas. The 
relations by which ideas are most easily and firmly associated 
are those of contiguity in place and resemblance. On these two 
relations the principal methods of assisting the memory have 
been founded. The methods of localization, or local memory, 
associate the object which it is wished to remember with some 
place or building, all the parts of which are well known. The 
methods of resemblance or symbolization, establish some resem- 
blance either between the things or the words which it is wished to 
remember, and some object more familiar to the mind. Rhythm 
and rhyme giving aid to the memory, technical verses have been 
framed for that purpose in various departments of study. 

The topical or local memory has been traced back to Simo- 
nides, who lived in the sixth century, B.C. Cicero (De 
Orator e, ii., 86) describes a local memory or gives a Topology. 



308 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

MEi!IOEIA TECHNICA- 

Quintilian (xi,, 2) and Pliny the naturalist (vii., 24) also de- 
scribe this art. 

In modern times, may be mentioned, Gray, Memoria Tech- 
nical, 1730; and Feinagle, New Art of Memory, 1812. 

MENTAL l»HllL,OSOl»Hl r . — The adjective mental comes to us 
from the Latin mens, or from the Greek phog, or these may be 
referred to the German meinen, to mean, to mark. If the 
adjective mental be regarded as coming from the Latin mens, 
then mental philosophy will be the philosophy of the human 
mind, and will correspond with psychology. If the adjective 
mental be regarded as coming from the German meinen, to 
mean or to mark, then the phrase mental philosophy may be 
restricted to the philosophy of the mind in its intellectual 
energies, or those faculties by which it marks or knows, as dis- 
tinguished from those faculties by which it feels or wills. It 
would appear that it is often used in this restricted signification 
to denote the philosophy of the intellect, or of the intellectual 
powers, as contradistinguished from the active powers, exclusive 
of the phenomena of the sensitivity and the will. 

See Chalmers, Sketches of Moral and Mental Philosophy, c. 1. 

MERIT (meritum, from pepog, a part or portion of labour or 
reward), means good desert ; having done something worthy 
of praise or reward, 

" Fear not the anger of the wise to raise j 
Those "best can hear reproof, who merit praise. " 

Pope, Essay on Criticism, 

In seeing a thing to be right, we see at the same time that 
we ought to do it ; and when we have done it we experience a 
feeling of conscious satisfaction or self- approbation. We thus 
come by the idea of merit or good desert. The approbation of 
our own mind is an indication that God approves of our con- 
duct ; and the religious sentiment strengthens the moral one. 
We have the same sentiments towards others. When we see 
another do what is right, we applaud him. When we see him 
do what is right in the midst of temptation and difficulty, we 
say he has much merit. Such conduct appears to be deserving 
of reward. Virtue and happiness ought to go together. We 
are satisfied that under the government of God they will do so. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 309 

MERIT— 

The idea of merit then is a primary and natural idea to the 
mind of man. It is not an after thought to praise the doing of 
what is right from seeing that it is beneficial, but a spontaneous 
sentiment indissolubly connected with our idea of what is right, 
a sentiment guaranteed as to its truthfulness by the structure 
of the human mind and the character of God. — See Price, 
Review, ch. 4. 

The scholastic distinction between merit of congruity and 
merit of condignity is thus stated by Hobbes {Of Man, pt. i., 
ch. 14) : — u God Almighty having promised paradise to those 
that can walk through this world according to the limits and 
precepts prescribed by Him ; they say, he that shall so walk, 
shall merit paradise ex congruo. But because no man can 
demand a right to it by his own righteousness, or any other 
power in himself, but by the free grace of God only ; they say, 
no man can merit paradise ex condigno" — V. Virtue. 
METAPHOR (/^srot^opea, to transfer). — u A metaphor is the 
transferring of a word from its usual meaning, to an analogous 
meaning, and then the employing it agreeably to such transfer." 
Arist., Poet., cap. 21. For example: the usual meaning of 
evening is the conclusion of the day. But age too is a conclu- 
sion, the conclusion of human life. Now there being an analogy 
in all conclusions, we arrange in order the two we have alleged, 
and say, that u as evening is to the day, so is age to human 
life." Hence by an easy permutation (which furnishes at once 
two metaphors) we say alternately, that u evening is the age of 
the day," and that " age is the evening of life." — Harris, 
Philosoph. Arrange., p. 441. 

" Sweet is primarily and properly applied to tastes ; second- 
arily and improperly (i. e., by analogy) to sounds. 

" When the secondary meaning of a word is founded on 
some fanciful analogy, and especially when it is introduced for 
ornament's sake, we call this a metaphor, as when we speak of 
a ship's ploughing the deep ; the turning up of the surface being 
essential indeed to the plough, but accidental only to the ship." 
— Whately, Log., b. iii., § 10. 
METAPHOR and SIMILE. — " A metaphor differs from a 
simile in form only, not in substance. In a simile, the two 



310 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

METAPHOR— 

subjects are kept distinct in the expression, as well as in 
the thought ; in a metaphor they are kept distinct in the 
thought, but not in the expression. A hero resembles a lion ; 
and upon that resemblance many similies have been founded by 
Homer and other poets. But let us invoke the aid of the 
imagination, and figure the hero to be a lion, instead of only 
resembling one ; by that variation the simile is converted into 
a metaphor, which is supported by describing all the qualities 
of the lion that resemble those of the hero. (Arist., Rhet., 
lib. iii., cap. 4.) When I say of some great minister, that 'he 
upholds the state like a pillar which supports the weight of a 
whole edifice, ' I evidently frame a comparison ; but when I 
say of the same minister, that c he is a pillar of the state,' this 
is not a comparison but a metaphor. The comparison between 
the minister and the pillar is instituted in the mind, but with- 
out the aid of words which denote comparison. The comparison 
is only insinuated, not expressed ; the one object is supposed 
to be so like the other, that, without formally drawing the 
comparison, the name of the one may be substituted for that 
of the other." — Irving, English Composition, p. 172.— V. Anal- 
ogy, Allegory. 
METAPHYSICS. — This word is commonly said to have originated 
in the fact that Tyrannion or Andronicus, the collectors and 
conservers of the works of Aristotle, inscribed upon a portion 
of them the words Toi peTa, tk (pvatxa. But a late French 
critic, Mons. Ravaisson (Essai sur la Metaphysique, torn. L, p. 
40), says he has found earlier traces of this phrase, and thinks 
it probable that, although not employed by Aristotle himself, 
it was applied to this portion of his writings by some of his 
immediate disciples. Whether the phrase was intended merely 
to indicate that this portion should stand, or that it should be 
studied, after the physics, in the collected works of Aristotle, 
are the two views which have been taken. In point of fact, 
this portion does usually stand after the physics. But in the 
order of science or study, Aristotle said, that after physics 
should come mathematics. And Derodon {Proem. Metaphys.) 
has given reasons why metaphysics should be studied after logic, 
and before physics and other parts of philosophy. But the 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 311 

METAPHYSICS— 

truth is that the preposition ^itol means along with as well as 
after, and might even be translated above. In Latin metaphy- 
sica is synonymous with super natur alia. And in English 
Shakspeare has used metaphysical as synonymous with super- 
natural. 

..." Fate and metaphysical aid doth seem 

To have thee crowned." 

Macbeth, Act i., scene 3. 

Clemens Alexandrinus (Strom, i.) considered metaphysical as 
equivalent to supernatural; and is supported by an anonymous 
Greek commentator, whom Patricius has translated into Latin, 
and styles Philoponus. 

But if pizci be interpreted, as it may, to mean along with, 
then metaphysics or metaphysical philosophy will be that philo- 
sophy which we should take along with us into physics, and into 
every other philosophy — that knowledge of causes and prin- 
ciples which we should carry with us into every department of 
inquiry. Aristotle called it the governing philosophy, which 
gives laws to all, but receives laws from none (Metaphys., lib. 
i., cap. 2). Lord Bacon has limited its sphere, when he says, 
4t The one part (of philosophy) which is physics enquireth and 
handleth the material and efficient causes ; and the other which 
is metaphysic handleth the formal smdfnal cause." — (Advance- 
ment of Learning, book ii.)* But all causes are considered by 
Aristotle in his writings which have been entitled metaphysics. 
The inquiry into causes was called by him the first philosophy 
— science of truth, science of being. It has for its object — not 
those things which are seen and temporal — phenomenal and 
passing, but things not seen and eternal, things supersensuous 
and stable. It investigates the first principles of nature and 

* In another passage, however, Bacon admits the advantage, if not the validity, of a 
higher metaphysic than this. " Because the distributions and partitions of knowledge 
are not like several lines that meet in one angle, and so touch but in a point, but are like 
branches of a tree that meet in a stem, which hath a dimension and quantity of entire- 
ness and continuance, before it come to discontinue and break itself into arms and 
boughs; therefore, it is good to erect and constitute one universal science by the name 
of ' phUosophia prima,' 1 primitive or summary philosophy, as the main and common way, 
before we come where the ways part and divide themselves ; which science. -whether 
I should report deficient or no, I stand doubtful." Except in so far as it proceeded by 
observation rather than by speculation a priori, even this science would have been 
but lightly esteemed by Bacon. 



312 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

METAPHYSICS— 

of thought, the ultimate causes of existence and of knowledge. 
It considers things in their essence, independently of the par- 
ticular properties or determined modes which make a difference 
between one thing and another. In short, it is ontology or the 
science of being as being, that is, not the science of any par- 
ticular being or beings, such as animals or vegetables, lines or 
numbers, but the science of being in its general and common 
attributes. There is a science of matter and there is a science 
of mind. But metaphysics is the science of being as common 
to both. 

u The subject of metaphysics is the whole of things. This 
cannot be otherways known than in its principles and causes. 
Now these must necessarily be what is most general in nature ; 
for it is from generals that particulars are derived, which can- 
not exist without the generals ; whereas the generals may exist 
without the particulars. Thus, the species, man., cannot exist 
without the genus, animal; but animal maybe without man. 
And this holds universally of all genuses and specieses. The 
subject therefore of metaphysics, is what is principal in nature, 
and first, if not in priority of time, in dignity and excellence, 
and in order likewise, as being the causes of everything in the 
universe. Leaving, therefore, particular subjects, and their 
several properties, to particular sciences, this universal science 
compares these subjects together; considers wherein they 
differ and wherein they agree : and that which they have in 
common, but belongs not, in particular, to any one science, is 
the proper object of metaphysics" — Monboddo, Ancient Meta- 
phys., book iii., chap. 4. 

Metaphysics is the knowledge of the one and the real in oppo- 
sition to the many and the apparent (Arist., Metaphys., lib. 
iii., c. 2). Matter, as perceived by the senses, is a combina- 
tion of distinct and heterogeneous qualities, discernible, some 
by sight, some by smell, &c. What is the thing itself, the 
subject and owner of these several qualities, and yet not 
identical with any one of them? What is it by virtue of 
which those several attributes constitute or belong to one and 
the same thing? Mind presents to consciousness so many 
distinct states, and operations, and feelings. What is the 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 313 

METAPHYSICS— 

nature of that one mind, of which all these are so many modi- 
fications? The inquiry may be carried higher still, can we 
attain to any single conception of being in general, to which 
both mind and matter are subordinate, and from which the 
essence of both may be deduced? — Wolf, Philosoph. Ration. 
Disc. Prelim., sect. 73 ; Mansel, Prolegom. Log., p. 277. 

M Aristotle said every science must have for investigation a 
determined province and separate form of being, but none of 
these sciences reaches the conception of being itself. Hence 
there is needed a science which should investigate that which 
the other sciences take up hypothetically, or through experience. 
This is done by the first philosophy, which has to do with 
being as such, while the other sciences relate only to deter- 
mined and concrete being. The metaphysics, which is this 
science of being and its primitive grounds, is the first 
philosophy, since it is pre -supposed by every other discipline. 
Thus, says Aristotle, if there were only a physical substance, 
then would physics be the first and the only philosophy ; but 
if there be an immaterial and unmoved essence which is the 
ground of all being, then must there be also an antecedent, 
and because it is antecedent, a universal philosophy. The first 
ground of all being is God, whence Aristotle occasionally gives 
to the first philosophy the name of theology." — Schwegler, 
Hist. ofPhilos., p. 112. 

Metaphysics was formerly distinguished into general and 
special. The former was called Ontology — (q. v.), or the science 
of being in general, whether infinite or finite, spiritual or 
material ; and explained therefore the most universal notions 
and attributes common to all beings — such as entity, non- 
entity, essence, existence, unity, identity, diversity, &c. This 
is metaphysics properly so called. Special metaphysics was 
sometimes called Pneumatology — (q. v.), and included — 1. 
Natural Theology, or Theodicy ; 2. Rational Cosmology, or 
the science of the origin and order of the world ; and 3. 
Rational Psychology, which treated of the nature, faculties, and 
destiny of the human mind. 

The three objects of special metaphysics, viz., God, the 
world, and the human mind, correspond to Kant's three ideas 



314 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

METAPHYSICS— 

of the pure reason. According to him, a systematic exposi- 
tion of those notions and truths, the knowledge of which is 
altogether independent of experience, constitutes the science 
of metaphysics. 

" Time was," says Kant (Preface to the first edition of the 
Crit. of Pure Reason), " when metaphysics was the queen of all 
the sciences ; and if we take the will for the deed, she certainly 
deserves, so far as regards the high importance of her object 
matter, this title of honour. Now, it is the fashion of the time 
to heap contempt and scorn upon her ; and the matron mourns, 
forlorn and forsaken, like Hecuba — 

' Modo, maxima rerum, 
Tot generis, natisque potens, 
Nunc traoor exul, inops.' " 

According to D'Alembert (Melanges, torn, iv., p. 143), the 
aim of metaphysics is to examine the generation of our ideas, 
and to show that they all come from sensations. This is the 
ideology of Condillac and De Tracy. 

Mr. Stewart (Dissert., part ii., p. 475) has said that "Meta- 
physics was a word formerly appropriated to the ontology and 
pneumatology of the schools, but now understood as equally 
applicable to all those inquiries which have for their object, to 
trace the various branches of human knowledge to their first 
principles in the constitution of the human mind." And in 
the Preface to the Dissert., he has said that by metaphysics he 
understands the u inductive philosophy of the human mind." 
In this sense the word is now popularly employed to denote, 
not the rational psychology of the schools, but psychology, or 
the philosophy of the human mind prosecuted according to 
the inductive method. In consequence of the subtle and in- 
soluble questions prosecuted by the schoolmen, under the 
head of metaphysics, the word and the inquiries which it in- 
cludes have been exposed to ridicule.* 

* The word metaphysics was handled by Rev. Sydney Smith (Elementary Sketches of 
Moral Philosophy, chap. 1, p. 3,) with as much caution as if it had been a hand-grenade. 

"There is a word," he exclaimed, when lecturing, with his deep, sonorous, warning 
voice, " of dire sound and horrible import, which I would fain have kept concealed if I 
possibly could, but as this is not feasible, I shall even meet the danger at once, and get 
out of it as well as I can. The word to which I allude is that very tremendous one of 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 315 

METAPHYSICS— 

But there is and must be a science of being, otherwise there 
is and can be no science of knowing. 

"If by metaphysics we mean those truths of the pure reason 
which always transcend, and not seldom appear to contradict 
the understanding, or (in the words of the great apostle) 
spiritual verities which can only be spiritually discerned, and 
this is the true and legitimate meaning of metaphysics, ^gTot roi 
(pvviKa., then I affirm, that this very controversy between the 
Arminians and the Calvinists (as to grace), in which both are 
partially right in what they affirm, and both wholly wrong in 
what they deny, is a proof that without metaphysics there can 
be no light of faith." — Coleridge, Notes on Eng. Div., vol. i., 
p. 340. 

In French the word metaphysique is used as synonymous with 
philosophic, to denote the first principles, or an inquiry into the 
first principles of any science. La Metaphysique du Droit, La 
Metaphysique du Moral, &c. It is the same in German. 
METEmPSYCHOSlS (psTa, beyond ; s^v^oa, to animate), is 
the transmigration or passage of the soul from one body to 
another. " We read in Plato, that from the opinion of metem- 
psychosis, or transmigration of the souls of men into the bodies 
of beasts most suitable unto their human condition, after his 
death, Orpheus the musician became a swan." — Browne, Vulgar 
Errors, b. iii., c. 27. 

This doctrine implies a belief in the pre-existence and immor- 
tality of the soul. And, according to Herodotus (lib. ii., sect. 
123), the Egyptians were the first to espouse both doctrines. 
They believed that the soul at death entered into some animal 
created at the moment ; and that after having inhabited the 

1 metaphysics,' which in a lecture on moral philosophy, seems likely to produce as much 
alarm as the cry of 'fire' in a crowded playhouse; when Belvidera is left to cry by 
herself, and every one saves himself in the best manner he can. I must beg of my 
audience, however, to sit quiet, and in the meantime to make use of the language which 
the manager would probably adopt on such an occasion : I can assure ladies and gentle- 
men there is not the smallest degree of danger." 

The blacksmith of Glamis' description of metaphysics was— "Twa folk disputin* the- 

gither; he that's listenin' disna ken what he that's speakin' means, and he that's speakin' 

disna ken what he means himsel'— that's metaphysics." 
Another said—" God forbid that I should say a word against metap7iysics, only, if a 

man should try to see down his own throat, with a lighted candle in his hand, let him 

take care lest he set his head on fire." 



316 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

METEMPSYCHOSIS— 

forms of all animals on earth, in the water, or in the air, it 
returned at the end of three thousand years into a human body, 
to begin anew a similar course of transmigration. (Among the 
inhabitants of India the transmigration of the soul was more 
nearly allied to the doctrine of emanation — q, v.) The common 
opinion is, that the doctrine of transmigration passed from 
Egypt into Greece. But, before any communication between 
the two countries, it had a place in the Orphic mysteries. 
Pythagoras may have given more precision to the doctrine. It 
was adopted by Plato and his followers, and was secretly taught 
among the early Christians, according to one of St. Jerome's 
letters. The doctrine, when believed, should lead to abstaining 
from flesh, fish, or fowl, and this, accordingly, was one of the 
fundamental injunctions in the religion of Brahma, and in the 
philosophy of Pythagoras. 

IHLETHOD (piQoliog, pzTa, and 616 g), means the way or path by 
which we proceed to the attainment of some object or aim. In 
its widest acceptation, it denotes the means employed to obtain 
some end. Every art and every handicraft has its method, Cicero 
translates piQolog by via, and couples it with ars. (Brutus, 
c. 12. Compare De Finibus, ii., 1, and also Be Orat, i., 19). 
Scientific or philosophical method is the march which the 
mind follows in ascertaining or communicating truth. It is the 
putting of our thoughts in a certain order with a view to im- 
prove our knowledge or to convey it to others. 

Method maybe called, in general, the art of disposing well a 
series of many thoughts, either for the discovering truth when we 
are ignorant of it, or for proving it to others when it is already 
known. Thus there are two kinds of method, one for discover- 
ing truth, which is called analysis, or the method of resolution, 
and which may also be called the method of invention ; and the 
other for explaining it to others when we have found it, which 
is called synthesis, or the method of composition, and which may 
also be called the method of doctrine. — Port Roy. Logic, part iv., 
ch. 2. 

u Method, which is usually described as the fourth part of 
Logic, is rather a complete practical Logic. It is rather a 
power or spirit of the intellect, pervading all that it does, 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 317 

METHOD— 

than its tangible product." — Thomson, Outline of Laws of 
Thought, sect. 119. 

Every department of philosophy has its own proper melhod ; 
but there is a universal method or science of method. This was 
called by Plato, dialectic ; and represented as leading to the 
true and the real. (Repub., lib. vii.) It has been said that 
the word yAQoho;, as it occurs in Aristotle's Ethics, should be 
translated " system," rather than " method." — (Paul, An- 
alysis of Aristotle's Ethics, p. 1.) But the construction of a 
system implies method. And no one was more thoroughly 
aware of the importance of a right method than Aristotle. He 
has said (Metaphys., lib. ii.), " that we ought to see well what 
demonstration (or proof) suits each particular subject ; for 
it would be absurd to mix together the research of science 
and that of method ; two things, the acquisition of which offers 
great difficulty." The deductive method of philosophy came at 
once finished from his hand. And the inductive method was 
more extensively and successfully followed out by him than 
has been generally thought. 

James Acontius, or Concio, as he is sometimes called, was 
born at Trent, and came to England in 1567. He published 
a work, De Methodo, of which Mons. Degerando {Hist. Compar. 
des Systemes de Philosophic, part, ii., torn, ii., p. 3) has given 
an analysis. According to him all knowledge deduced from 
a process of reasoning presupposes some primitive truths, 
founded in the nature of man, and admitted as soon as an- 
nounced; and the great aim of method should be to bring 
these primitive truths to light, that by their light we may 
have more light. Truths obtained by the senses, and by 
repeated experience, become at length positive and certain 
knowledge. 

Descartes has a discourse on Method. He has reduced it to 
four general rules. 

I. To admit nothing as true of which we have not a clear 
and distinct idea. We have a clear and distinct idea of our 
own existence. -And in proportion as our idea of anything 
else approaches to, or recedes from, the clearness of this idea, 
it ought to be received or rejected. 



318 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

METHOD— 

II. To divide every object inquired into as much as possible 
into its parts. Nothing is more simple than the ego, or self- 
consciousness. In proportion as the object of inquiry is simpli- 
fied, the evidence comes to be nearer that of self- consciousness. 

III. To ascend from simple ideas or cognitions to those that 
are more complex. The real is often complex : and to arrive 
at the knowledge of it as a reality, we must by synthesis 
reunite the parts which were previously separated. 

IV. By careful and repeated enumeration to see that all 
the parts are reunited. For the synthesis will be deceitful 
and incomplete if it do not reunite the whole, and thus give 
the reality. 

This method begins with provisory doubt, proceeds by an- 
alysis and synthesis, and ends by accepting evidence in propor- 
tion as it resembles the evidence of self-consciousness. 

These rules are useful in all departments of philosophy. But 
different sciences have different methods suited to their objects 
and to the end in view. 

In prosecuting science with the view of extending our 
knowledge of it, or the limits of it, we are said to follow 
the method of investigation or inquiry, and our procedure 
will be chiefly in the way of analysis. But in communicating 
what is already known, we follow the method of exposition 
or doctrine, and our procedure will be chiefly in the way of 
synthesis. 

In some sciences the principles or laws are given, and the 
object of the science is to discover the possible application of 
them. In these sciences the method is deductive, as in geome- 
try. In other sciences, the facts or phenomena are given, and 
the object of the science is to discover the principles or laws. 
In these sciences the proper method is inductive, proceeding by 
observation or experiment, as in psychology and physics. The 
method opposed to this, and which was long followed, was the 
constructive method; which, instead of discovering causes by 
induction, imagined or assigned them a priori, or ex hypo- 
thesis and afterwards tried to verify them. This method is 
seductive and bold but dangerous and insecure, and should be 
resorted to with great caution. — V. Hypothesis. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 319 

METHOD- 

The use of method, both in obtaining and applying know- 
ledge for ourselves, and in conveying and communicating it 
to others, is great and obvious. " Currenti extra viam, quo 
habilior sit et velocior, eo majorem contingere aberrationem" — 
Nov. Org., i., 61. " Une bonne methode donne a l'esprit une 
telle puissance qu'elle peut en quelque sorte remplacer le 
talent. C'est un levier qui donne a l'homme faible, qui 
l'employe, une force que ne sauvait posseder l'homme le plus 
fort qui serait prive d'un semblable moyen." — Comte, Traite 
de V Legislation, lib. i., c. 1. La Place has said, — " La con- 
naissance de la methode qui a guide l'homme de genie, n'est 
pas moins utile au progres de la science, et meme a sa propre 
gloire, que ses decouvertes." 

" Marshal thy notions into a handsome method. One will 
carry twice as much weight, trussed and packed up in bundles, 
than when it lies untoward, flapping and hanging about his 
shoulders." — Pleasures of Literature, 12mo, Lond., 1851, 
p. 104. 

See Descartes, On Method; Coleridge, On Method, Introd. 
to Encyclop. Metropol. ; Friend, vol. iii. — V. System. 
METHODOLOGY (JMethodenlelire) is the transcendental doctrine 
of method. See Kant, Crit. of Pure Reason, p. 541, Hay- 
woods translation. The elementary doctrine has been called 
by some Elementology , or the science treating of the form of a 
metaphysical system. 
METONOMir. — V. Intention. 
microcosm.-- V. Macrocosm. 

MIN1> is that which moves, body is that which is moved. — Mon- 
boddo, Ancient Metapliys., book ii., chap. 3. See his remarks 
on the definition of Plato and Aristotle, chap. 4. 

" By mind we mean something which, when it acts, knows 
what it is going to do ; something stored with ideas of its 
intended works, agreeably to which ideas those works are 
fashioned." — Harris, Hermes, p. 227. 

" Mind, that which perceives, feels, thinks, and wills." — 
Taylor, Elements of Thought. 

" Among metaphysicians, mind is becoming a generic, and 
soul an individual designation. Mind is opposed to matter : 



320 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

MIITO— 

soul to body. Mind is soul without regard to personality ; 
soul is the appropriate mind of the being under notice. Ety- 
mologically, mind is the principle of volition, and soul the 
principle of animation. "I mean to go" was originally U I 
mind to go." Soul, at first identical with self, is from sellan, 
to say, the faculty of speech being its characteristic. 

" Dumb, and without a soul, beside such "beauty, 
He has no mind to marry." — Taylor, Synonyms. 

—V. Soul. 
MIRACLE (jniror, to wonder). — U A miracle I take to be a 
sensible operation, which being above the comprehension of 
the spectator, and, in his opinion, contrary to the established 
course of nature, is taken by men to be divine."— Locke, A 
Discourse of Miracles. 

" A miracle," says Mr. Hume (Essay on Miracles), u is a 
violation of the laws of nature ; and as a firm and unalterable 
experience has established these laws, the proof against a 
miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as complete as 
any argument from experience can possibly be imagined ; and 
if so, it is an undeniable consequence, that it cannot be sur- 
mounted by any proof whatever derived from human testi- 
mony." 

This sceptical objection is said to have been suggested by a 
sermon of Dr. South, vol. ix., sermon 8. It has been replied 
to by Dr. Adams, Essay in Answer, &c. ; Dr. Campbell, 
Dissert, on Miracles ; Bp. Douglas, Criterion of Miracles. 
See also Lemoine, A Treatise on Miracles, 8vo, Lond., 
1747. 

MNEMONICS. — V. MEMOEIA TeCHNICA. 

KIOl>AlilTY is the term employed to denote the most general 
points of view under which the different objects of thought 
present themselves to our mind. Now all that we think of 
we think of as possible, or contingent, or impossible, or neces- 
sary. The possible is that which may equally be or not be, 
which is not yet, but which may be ; the contingent is that 
which already is, but which might not have been ; the neces- 
sary is that which always is ; and the impossible is that which 
never is. These are the modalities of being, which neces- 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 321 

sarily find a place in thought, and in the expression of it in 
judgments and in propositions. Hence arise the four modal 
propositions which Aristotle has defined and opposed (Tlspi 
€£fiwvetusi c. 12-14). He did not use the term modality, but 
it is to be found among his commentators and the scholastic 
philosophers. In the philosophy of Kant, our judgments are 
reduced under the four heads of quantity, quality, relation, 
and modality. In reference to modality they are either pro- 
blematic, or assertory, or apodeictical. And hence the cate- 
gory of modality includes possibility and impossibility, existence 
and non-existence, necessity or contingency. But existence 
and non-existence should have no place ; the contingent and 
the necessary are not different from being. — Diet, des Sciences 
Philosoph. 
MODE. — u The manner in which a thing exists is called a mode or 
affection ; shape and colour are modes of matter, memory and 
joy are modes of mind." — Taylor, Elements of Thought. 

"Modes, I call such complex ideas, which, however com- 
pounded, contain not in them the supposition of subsisting by 
themselves, but are considered as dependences on, or affections 
of, substances." — Locke, Essay on Hum. Understand., b. ii., 
chap. 12, sect. 4. 

" There are some modes which may be called internal, be- 
cause they are conceived to be in the substance, as round, 
square; and others which maybe called external, because they 
are taken from something which is not in the substance, as 
loved, seen, desired, which are names taken from the action of 
another ; and this is what is called in the schools an external 
denomination." — Port Roy. Logic, part i., chap. 2. 

" Modes or modifications of mind, in the Cartesian school, 
mean merely what some recent philosophers express by states 
of mind ; and include both the active and passive phenomena 
of the conscious subject. The terms were used by Descartes 
as well as by his disciples." — Sir William Hamilton, Eeid's 
Works, p. 295, note. 

Mode is the manner in which a substance exists ; thus wax 
may be round or square, solid or fluid. Modes are secondary 
or subsidiary, as they could not be without substance, which 



322 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

MO0E- 

exists by itself. Substances are not confined to any mode, but 
must exist in some. Modes are all variable conditions, and 
though some one is necessary to every substance, the particular 
ones are all accidental. Modification is properly the bringing 
of a thing into a mode, but is sometimes used to denote the 
mode of existence itself. State is a nearly synonymous but a 
more extended term than mode. 

A mode is a variable and determinate affection of a substance, 
a quality which it may have or not, without affecting its essence 
or existence. A body may be at rest or in motion, a mind may 
affirm or deny, without ceasing to be. They are not accidents, 
because they arise directly from the nature of the substance 
which experiences them. JSTor should they be called phenomena, 
which may have or not have their cause in the object which 
exhibits them But modes arise from the nature of the sub- 
stance affected by them. It is true that one substance modifies 
another, and in this view modes may sometimes be the effect of 
causes out of the substance in which they appear. They are 
then called modifications. Fire melts wax ; the liquidity of wax 
in this view is a modification. 

All beings which constitute the universe modify one another ; 
but a soul endowed with liberty is the only being that modifies 
itself, or which can be altogether and in the same mode, cause 
and substance, active and passive. — Diet, des Sciences Pliilo- 



"That quality which distinguishes one genus, one species, or 
even one individual, from another, is termed a modification ; 
then the same particular that is termed a property or quality, 
when considered as belonging to an individual, or a class of 
individuals, is termed a modification when considered as dis- 
tinguishing the individual or the class from another ; a black 
skin and soft curled hair, are properties of a negro ; the same 
circumstances considered as marks that distinguish a negro 
from a man of different species, are denominated modifications." 
— Karnes, Elements of Criticism, App. 
mOliECUIiE {molecula, a little mass), is the smallest portion of 
matter cognizable by any of our senses. It is something real, 
and thus differs from atom, which is not perceived but conceived. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 323 

MCOIiECmLE— 

It is the smallest portion of matter which we can reach by our 
means of dividing, while atom is the last possible term of all 
division. When molecules are of simple homogeneous elements, 
as of gold or silver, they are called integrant', when they are 
of compound or heterogeneous elements, as salts and acids, 
they are called constituent. 
MONAD, UI0IVAJD01.0OY (povag, unity, one). — According to 
Leibnitz, the elementary particles of matter are vital forces not 
acting mechanically, but from an internal principle. They are 
incorporeal or spiritual atoms, inaccessible to all change from 
without, but subject to internal movement. This hypothesis 
he explains in a treatise entitled Monadologie. He thought 
inert matter insufficient to explain the phenomena of body, and 
had recourse to the entelechies of Aristotle, or the substantial 
forms of the scholastic philosophy, conceiving of them as 
primitive forces, constituting the substance of matter, atoms 
of substance but not of matter, real and absolute unities, meta- 
physical points, full of vitality, exact as mathematical points, 
and real as physical points. These substantial unities which 
constitute matter are of a nature inferior to spirit and soul, 
but they are imperishable, although they may undergo trans- 
formation. 

" Leibnitz conceived the whole universe, bodies as well as 
minds, to be made up of monads, that is, simple substances, 
each of which is, by the Creator, in the beginning of its exis- 
tence, endowed with certain active and perceptive powers. A 
monad, therefore, is an active substance, simple, without parts 
or figure, which has within itself the power to produce all the 
changes it undergoes from the beginning of its existence to 
eternity. The changes which the monad undergoes, of what 
kind soever, though they may seem to us the effect of causes 
operating from without, are only the gradual and successive 
evolutions of its own internal powers, which would have pro- 
duced all the same changes and motions, although there had 
been no other being in the universe." — Reid, Intell. Pou\, 
essay ii., ch. 15. 

Mr. Stewart (Dissert., part ii., note 1, p. 219), has said. — 
14 After studying, with all possible diligence, what Leibnitz has 



324 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY, 

MONAD- 

said of his monads in different parts of his works, I find myself 
quite incompetent to annex any precise idea to the word as he 
has employed it." The most intelligible passage which he 
quotes is the following (torn, ii., p. 50) : — u A monad is not 
a material but & formal atom, it being impossible for a thing to 
be at once material, and possessed of a real unity and indivisi- 
bility. It is necessary, therefore, to revive the obsolete doctrine 
of substantial forms (the essence of which consists in force), 
separating it, however, from the various abuses to which it is 
liable." 

" Monadology rests upon this axiom — Every substance is at 
the same time a cause, and every substance being a cause, has 
therefore in itself the principle of its own development : such is 
the monad ; it is a simple force. Each monad has relation to 
all others ; it corresponds with the plan of the universe ; it is 
the universe abridged ; it is, as Leibnitz says, a living mirror 
which reflects the entire universe under its own point of view. 
But every monad being simple, there is no immediate action of 
one monad upon another ; there is, however, a natural relation 
of their respective development, which makes their apparent 
communication ; this natural relation, this harmony which has 
its reason in the wisdom of the supreme director, is pre-estab- 
lished harmony ." — Cousin, Hist. Mod. Philosophy vol. ii., p. 86. 
MONOOAMY (f&ovos, yapo;, one marriage), is the doctrine that 
one man should have only one wife, and a wife only one hus- 
band. It has also been interpreted to mean that a man or 
woman should not marry more than once. — V. Polygamy. 
mONOTHElSilI (p,6i/o$, Hos, one God), is the belief in one God only. 
u The general propensity to the worship of idols was totally 
subdued, and the Jews became mohotheists, in the strictest sense 
of the term." — Cogan, Discourse on Jewish Dispensation, c. 2, 
s. 7. 

V. Theism, Polytheism. 
ttlOOl*.— V. Syllogism. 
MORAL (moralis, from mos, manner), is used in several senses in 
philosophy. 

In reasoning, the word moral is opposed to demonstrative, 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

mOBAL- 

and means probable. Sometimes it is opposed to material, and 
in this sense it means mental, or that the object to which it is 
applied belongs to mind and not to matter. Thus we speak of 
moral science as distinguished from physical science. 

It is also opposed to intellectual and to (Esthetic. Thus 
distinguish between a moral habit and an intellectual hal 
between that which is morally becoming and that which pie;: 
the powers of taste. 

Moral is opposed to positive. " Moral precepts are precc 
the reasons of which we see ; positive precepts are precepts, the 
reasons of which we do not see. Moral duties arise out of the 
nature of the case itself, prior to external command ; positive 
duties do not arise out of the nature of the case, but from 
external command ; nor would they be duties at all, were it 
not for such command received from Him whose creatures and 
subjects we are. r — Butler, Analogy, part ii., ch. 1. 

M A positive precept concerns a thing that is right be: 
commanded ; a moral precept respects a thing commanded 
because it is right. A Jew, for instance, was bound both to 
honour his parents, and also to worship at Jerusalem : but the 
former was commanded because it was right, and the latter was 
right because it was commanded." — Whately, Lessons on 
Morals. 
MORAL FACULTY, — V. CONSCIENCE. 

MORALITY. — " To lay down, in their universal form, the laws 
according to which the conduct of a free agent ought to be 
regulated, and to apply them to the different situations of 
human life, is the end of morality. 1 '' 

" A body of moral truths, definitely expressed, and arranged 
according to their rational connection," is the definition of a 
" system of morality" by Dr. Whewell, On Systematic Morality, 
lect. i. 

" The doctrine which treats of actions as right or wrong is 
morality: 1 — Whewell, Morality, seer 

" There are in the world two classes of objects, persons and 
things. And these are mutually related to each other. There 
are relations between persons and persons, and between things 
and things. And the peculiar distinctions of moral actions, 



326 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

MORALITY— 

moral characters, moral principles, moral habits, as contrasted 
with the intellect and other parts of man's nature, lies in this, 
that they always imply a relation between two persons, not be- 
tween two things.' ' — Sewell, Christ. Morals, p. 339. 

" Morality commences with, and begins in, the sacred dis- 
tinction between thing and person. On this distinction all 
law, human and divine, is grounded." — Coleridge, Aids to 
Reflection, vol. i., p. 265. 

" What the duties of morality are, the apostle instructs the 
believer in full, comprising them under the two heads of 
negative and positive ; negative, to keep himself pure from the 
world ; and positive, beneficence from loving-kindness, that is ? 
love of his fellow-men (his kind) as himself. Last and highest 
come the spiritual, comprising all the truths, acts, and duties, 
that have an especial reference to the timeless, the permanent, 
the eternal, to the sincere love of the true as truth, of the good 
as good, and of God as both in one. It comprehends the 
whole ascent from uprightness (morality, virtue, inward recti- 
tude) to godlikeness, with all the acts, exercises, and dis- 
ciplines of mind, will, and affections, that are requisite or 
conducive to the great design of our redemption from the 
form of the evil one, and of our second creation or birth in 
the divine image. 

" It may be an additional aid to reflection, to distinguish 
the three kinds severally, according to the faculty to which 
each corresponds, the part of our human nature which is more 
particularly its organ. Thus, the prudential corresponds to 
the sense and the understanding ; the moral, to the heart and 
the conscience ; the spiritual, to the will and the reason, that 
is, to the finite will reduced to harmony with, and in subordina- 
tion to, the reason, as a ray from that true light which is both 
reason and will, universal reason and will absolute." 

How nearly this scriptural division coincides with the Pla- 
tonic, see Prudence. — Coleridge, Aids to Reflection, vol. i., 
pp. 22, 23. 
MORAL PHILOSOPHY is the science of human duty. The 
knowledge of human duty implies a knowledge of human 
nature. To understand what man ought to do, it is necessary 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 327 

MORAL- 

to know what man is. Xot that the moral philosopher, before 
entering upon those inquiries which peculiarly belong to him, 
must go over the science of human nature in all its extent. 
But it is necessary to examine those elements of human 
nature which have a direct bearing upon human conduct. A 
full course of moral philosophy should consist, therefore, of two 
parts — the first containing an analysis and illustration of those 
powers and principles by which man is prompted to act, and 
by the possession of which, he is capable of acting under a 
sense of duty ; the second, containing an arrangement and 
exposition of the duties incumbent upon him as the possessor 
of an active and moral nature. As exhibiting the facts and 
phenomena presented by an examination of the active and 
moral nature of man, the first part may be characterized as 
psychological ; and as laying down the duties arising from the 
various relations in which man, as a moral agent, has been 
placed, the second part may be designated as deontological. 

" The moral philosopher has to investigate the principles 
according to which men act — the motives which influence 
them in fact — the objects at which they commonly aim — the 
passions, desires, characters, manners, tastes, which appear in 
the world around him, and in his own constitution. Further, 
as in all moral actions, the intellectual principles are impli- 
cated with the feelings, he must extend his inquiry to the 
phenomena of the mental powers, and know both what they 
are in themselves, and how they are combined in actions with 
the feelings." — Hampden, Introd, to Mor. Phil., lect. vi., 
p. 187.— V. Ethics. 

MORAL SENSE.— V. SENSES (Reflex). 

IIIORPHOLOGY (pootpq, form ; "Koyog). — u The branch of botanical 
science which treats of the forms of plants is called morphology, 
and is now regarded as the fundamental department of botany." 
— M'Cosh, Typical Forms, p. 23. 

" The subject of animal morphology has recently been ex- 
panded into a form, strikingly comprehensive and systematic, 
by Mr. Owen." — Whewell, Supplem. vol., p. 140. So that 
morphology treats of the forms of plants and animals, or organ- 
ized beings. 



328 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

MOTION (xivYiGtg) is the continued change of place of a body, or 
of any parts of a body ; for in the cases of a globe turning on 
its axis, and of a wheel revolving on a pivot, the parts of these 
bodies change their places, while the bodies themselves remain 
stationary. 

Motion is either physical, that is, obvious to the senses, or 
not physical, that is, knowable by the rational faculty. 

Aristotle has noticed several kinds of physical motion. 
Change of place, as when a body moves from one place to 
another, remaining the same. Alteration or aliation, as when 
a body from being round, becomes square. Augmentation or 
diminution, as when a body becomes larger or smaller. All 
these are changes from one attribute to another, while the 
substance remains the same. 

But body only moves because it is moved. And Aristotle 
traced all motion to impulses in the nature of things, rising 
from the spontaneous impulse of life, appetite, and desire, up 
to the intelligent contemplation of what is good. 

As Heraclitus held that all things are continually changing, 
so Parmenides and Zeno denied the possibility of motion. The 
best reply to their subtle sophisms, was that given by Diogenes 
the Cynic, who walked into the presence of Zeno in refuta- 
tion of them. 

The notion of movement or motion, like that of extension, is 
acquired in connection with the exercise of the senses of sight 
and touch. 
MOTIVE. — u The deliberate preference by which we are moved 
to act, and not the object for the sake of which we act, is the 
principle of action ; and desire and reason, which is for the 
sake of something, is the origin of deliberate preference." — 
Aristotle, Ethic, lib. vi., cap. 2. 

Kant distinguishes between the subjective principle of appe- 
tition which he calls the mobile or spring (die Triebfeder), 
and the objective principle of the will, which he calls motive 
or determining reason (beiveggrund) ; hence the difference be- 
tween subjective ends to which we are pushed by natural 
disposition, and objective ends, which are common to us with 
all beings endowed with reason. — Willm, Hist, de la Philosoph. 
Allemande, torn, i., p. 357. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 32C 

MOTIVE— 

This seems to be the difference expressed in French between 
mobile and motif. 

H A motive is an object so operating upon the mind as to 
produce either desire or aversion." — Lord Karnes, Essay on 
Liberty and Necessity. 

" By motive" said Edwards (Inquiry, part i., sect. 2), " I 
mean the whole of that which moves, excites, or invites the 
mind to volition, whether that be one thing singly, or many 
things conjunctly. Many particular things may concur and 
unite their strength to induce the mind ; and when it is so, all 

together are, as it were, one complex motive 

Whatever is a motive, in this sense, must be something that is 
extant in the view or apprehension of the understanding, or per- 
ceiving faculty. Nothing can induce or invite the mind to 
will or act anything, any further than it is perceived, or is in 
some way or other in the mind's view ; for what is wholly 
unperceived, and perfectly out of the mind's view, cannot 
affect the mind at all." 

Hence it has been commpn to distinguish motives as external 
or objective, and as internal or subjective. Regarded objectively, 
motives are those external objects or circumstances, which, 
when contemplated, give rise to views or feelings which prompt 
or influence the will. Regarded subjectively, motives are those 
internal views or feelings which arise on the contemplation of 
external objects or circumstances. In common language, the 
term motive is applied indifferently to the external object, and 
to the state of mind, to which the apprehension or contempla- 
tion of it may give rise. The explanation of Edwards includes 
both. Dr. Reid said, that he " understood a motive, when 
applied to a human being, to be that for the sake of which 
he acts, and therefore that what he never was conscious of, 
can no more be a motive to determine his will, than it can be 
an argument to determine his judgment."* (Correspondence 
prefixed to his Wo?*J:s, p. 87). In his Essays on the Active 
Powers (essay iv., chap. 4), he said, u Everything that can be 

* "This is Aristotle's definition (to 'inzoe. ov) of end or final cause; and as a synonym 
for end or final cause the term motive had been long exclusively employed."— Sir Will. 
Hamilton. 



330 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

MOTIVE — 

called a motive is addressed either to the animal or to che 
rational part of our nature." Here the word motive is applied 
objectively to those external things, which, when contemplated, 
affect our intelligence or our sensitivity. But, in the very next 
sentence, he has said, " motives of the former kind are com- 
mon to us with the brutes." Here the word motive is applied 
subjectively to those internal principles of our nature, such as 
appetite, desire, passion, &c, which are excited by the con- 
templation of external objects, adapted and addressed to 
them. 

But, in order to a more precise use of the term motive, let it 
be noted, that, in regard to it, there are three things clearly 
distinguishable, although it may not be common, nor easy, 
always to speak of them distinctively. These are, the external 
object, the internal principle, and the state or affection of mind 
resulting from the one being addressed to the other. For 
example, bread or food of any kind, is the external object, 
which is adapted to an internal principle which is called 
appetite, and hunger or the desire for food is the internal 
feeling, which is excited or allayed as the circumstances may 
be, by the presentment of the external object to the internal 
principle. In popular language, the term motive might be 
applied to any one of these three ; and, it might be said, that 
the motive for such an action was bread, or appetite, or hunger. 
But, strictly speaking, the feeling of hunger was the motive ; it 
was that, in the preceding state of mind, which disposed or 
inclined the agent to act in one way rather than in any other. 
The same may be said of motives of every kind. In every case 
there may be observed the external object, the internal 
principle, and the resultant state or affection of mind ; and the 
term motive may be applied, separately and successively, to 
any one of them ; but speaking strictly it should be applied to 
the terminating state or affection of mind which arises from a 
principle of human nature having been addressed by an object 
adapted to it ; because, it is this state or affection of mind 
which prompts to action. The motive of an agent, in some 
particular action, may be said to have been injury, or resent- 
ment, or anger — meaning by the first of these words, the 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 331 

MOTIVE — 

wrongous behaviour of another : by the second, the principle 
in human nature affected by such behaviour : and by the third, 
the resultant state of mind in the agent. When it is said that 
a man acted prudently, it may intimate that his conduct was in 
accordance with the rules of propriety and prudence : or, that 
he adopted it. after careful consideration and forethought, or. 
from a sense of the benefit and advantage to be derived from 
it. In like manner, when it is said that a man acted con- 
scientiou sly, it may mean, that the particular action was re- 
garded not as a matter of interest, but of duty, or, that his 
moral faculty approved of it as right, or. that he felt himself 
under a sense of obligation to do it. In all these cases, the 
term motive is strictly applicable to the terminating state or 
affection of mind, which immediately precedes the volition or 
determination to act. 

To the question, therefore, whether motive means something 
in the mind or out of it, it is replied, that what moves the will 
is something in the preceding state of mind. The state of 
mind may have reference to something out of the mind. But 
what is out of the mind must be apprehended or contemplated 
— must be brought within the view of the mind, before it can 
in any way affect it. It is only in a secondary or remote sense, 
therefore, that external objects or circumstances can be called 
motives, or be said to move the will. Motivts are, strictly 
speaking, subjective — as they are internal states or affections of 
mind in the agent. 

And motives may be called subjective, not only in contradis- 
tinction to the external objects and circumstances which may 
be the occasion of them, but also in regard to the different 
effect which the same objects and circumstances may have, not 
only upon different individuals, but even upon the same in- 
dividuals, at different times. 

A man of slow and narrow intellect is unable to peiceive the 
value or importance of an object when presented to him, or 
the propriety and advantage of a course of conduct that may 
be pointed out to him. so clearly or so quickly as a man of 
large and vigorous intellect. The consequence will be. that 
with the same motives (objectively considered) presented to 



332 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

MOTIVE— 

them, the one may remain indifferent and indolent in reference 
to the advantage held out, while the other will at once appre- 
hend and pursue it. A man of cold and dull affections will 
contemplate a spectacle of pain or want, without feeling any 
desire or making any exertion to relieve it ; while he whose 
sensibilities are more acute and lively, will instantly be moved 
to the most active and generous efforts. An injury done to 
one man will rouse him at once to a phrenzy of indignation, 
which will prompt him to the most extravagant measures of 
retaliation or revenge ; while, in another man, it will only 
give rise to a moderate feeling of resentment. An action which 
will be contemplated with horror by a man of tender con- 
science, will be done without compunction by him whose moral 
sense has not been sufficiently exercised to discern between 
good and evil. In short, anything external to the mind will be 
modified in its effect, according to the constitution and train- 
ing of the different minds within the view of which it may be 
brought. 

And not only may the same objects differently affect different 
minds, but also the same mmds, at different times, or under 
different circumstances. He who is suffering the pain of hunger 
may be tempted to steal in order to satisfy his hunger ; but he 
who has bread enough and to spare, is under no such tempta- 
tion. A sum of money which might be sufficient to bribe 
one man, would be no trial to the honesty of another. Under 
the impulse of any violent passion, considerations of prudence 
and propriety have not the same weight as in calmer moments. 
The young are not so cautious, in circumstances of danger and 
difficulty, as those who have attained to greater age and 
experience. Objects appear to us in very different colours, in 
health and in sickness, in prosperity and in adversity, in society 
and in solitude, in prospect and in possession. 

It would thus appear that motives are in their nature subjec- 
tive, in their influence individual, and in their issue variable. 
MYSTICISM and MYSTERY have been derived from pva, to 
shut up ; hence ftvvTYig, one who shuts up. 

u The epithet sublime is strongly and happily descriptive 
of the feelings inspired by the genius of Plato, by the lofty 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 333 

MYSTICISM— 

mysticism of his philosophy, and even by the remote origin 
of the theological fables which are said to have descended 
to him from Orpheus." — Stewart, Philosopli. Essays, ii., 
chap. 5. 

Mysticism in philosophy is the belief that God may be known 
face to face, without anything intermediate. It is a yielding 
to the sentiment awakened by the idea of the infinite, and a 
running up of all knowledge and all duty to the contem- 
plation and love of Him. — Cousin, Hist, de la Philosoph. Mod., 
premiere serie, torn, ii., le9on 9, 10. 

Mysticism despairs of the regular process of science ; it 
believes that we may attain directly, without the aid of the 
senses or reason, and by an immediate intuition, the real and 
absolute principle of all truth, God. It finds God either in 
nature, and hence a physical and naturalistic mysticism ; or in 
the soul, and hence a moral and metaphysical mysticism. It 
has also its historical views ; and in history it considers espe- 
cially that which represents mysticism in full, and under its 
most regular form, that is religious ; and it is not to the letter 
of religions, but to their spirit, that it clings ; hence an 
allegorical and symbolical mysticism. Yan Helmont, Ames, 
and Pordage, are naturalistic mystics; Poiret is moral, and 
Bourignon and Fenelon are Divine mystics. Swedenborg's 
mysticism includes them all. 

" Whether in the Vedas, in the Platonists, or in the Hegelians, 
mysticism is neither more nor less than ascribing objective 
existence to the subjective creations of our own faculties, to 
ideas or feelings of the mind ; and believing that by watching 
and contemplating these ideas of its own making, it can read 
in them what takes place in the world without. " — Mill, Log., 
b. v., chap, iii., § 5. 

The Germans have two words for mysticism ; mystik and 
mysticismus. The former they use in a favourable, the latter 
in an unfavourable sense. Just as we say piety and pietism, 
or rationality and rationalism; keeping the first of each pair 
for use, the second for abuse. — Vaughan, Hours with the 
Mystics, vol. i., p. 23. 

Cousin, Hist, of Mod. Philosoph., vol. ii., pp. 94-7 ; Schmidt 



334 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

MYSTICISM— 

(Car.), Essai sur les Mystiques du Quatorzieme siecle. Stras- 
burg, 1836. 
JHYTII and MYTHOLOGY (pvdo$, a tale ; Koyog). — " I use this 
term (myth) as synonymous with c invention,' having no histo- 
rical basis." — Pococke, India in Greece, p. 2, note. 

The early history and the early religion of all nations are 
full of fables. Hence it is that myths have been divided into 
the traditional and the theological, or the historical and the 
religious* 

A myth is a narrative framed for the purpose of expressing 
some general truth, a law of nature, a moral phenomenon, or 
a religious idea, the different phases of which correspond to 
the turn of the narrative. An allegory agrees with it in 
expressing some general idea, but differs from it in this, — that 
in the allegory the idea was developed before the form, which 
was invented and adapted to it. The allegory is a reflective 
and artificial process, the myth springs up spontaneously and 
by a kind of inspiration. A symbol is a silent myth, which im- 
presses the truths which it conveys not by successive stages, 
but at once (vi>v, fixT^hcS) throws together significant images of 
some truth. 

Plato has introduced the myth into some of his writings in 
a subordinate way, as in the Gorgias, the Republic, and the 
Timceus. 

Blackwell, Letters Concerning Mythology, 8vo, Lond., 1748 ; 
Huttner, De Mythis Platonis, 4to, Leipsic, 1788 ; Bacon, On 
the Wisdom of the Ancients; Muller, Mythology: Translated 
by Leitch, 1844. 

On the philosophic value of myths, see Cousin, Cours, 1828 ; 
1 and 15 lecons, and the Argument of his translation of Plato. 

Some good remarks on the difference between the parable, 
the fable, the myth, &c, will be found in Trench, On the 
Parables, Introd. 

On the different views taken of Greek mythology, see Creuzer 
and Godfrey Hermann. 

* Among the early nations, every truth a little remote from common apprehension 
was embodied in their religious creed ; so that this second class would contain myths 
concerning Deity, morals, physics, astronomy, and metaphysics. These last are properly 
called philosophemes. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 335 

MYTH— 

See an Essay on Comparative Mythology, in the Oxford 
Essays for 1856 ; Grote, Hist, of Greece, vol. i., p. 400. 



natura — V. Nature. 

IVATURAIi, as distinguished from Supernatural or Miraculous, 

— u The only distinct meaning of the word natural is stated, 
fixed, or settled; since what is natural as much requires and 
presupposes an intelligent agent to render it so, that is, to 
effect it continually or at stated times, as what is supernatural 
or miraculous does to effect it for once." — Butler, Analogy, 
part i., chap. 1. 
Natural, as distinguished from Innate or Instinctive, 

" There is a great deal of difference," said Mr. Locke (Essay 
on Hum. Understand., book i., ch. 3), u between an innate lav:, 
and a law of nature; between something imprinted on our 
minds in their very original, and something that we being 
ignorant of, may attain to the knowledge of by the use and 
application of our natural faculties. And I think they equally 
forsake the truth who, running into contrary extremes, either 
affirm an innate law, or deny that there is a law knowable by 
the light of nature, without the help of positive revelation." 

" Of the various powers and faculties we possess, there are 
some which nature seems both to have planted and reared, so 
as to have left nothing to human industry. Such are the powers 
which we have in common with the brutes, and which are 
necessary to the preservation of the individual, or to the con- 
tinuance of the kind. There are other powers, of which nature 
hath only planted the seeds in our minds, but hath left the 
rearing of them to human culture.* It is by the proper culture 
of these that we are capable of all those improvements in intel- 
lectuals, in taste, and hi morals, which exalt and dignify human 
nature ; while, on the other hand, the neglect or perversion of 
them makes its degeneracy and corruption." — Reid, Inquiry, 
ch. 1, sect. 2. 

* Yet Dr. Reid, when speaking of natural rights {Act. Poir., essay v., ch. - r ^ uses innate 
as synonymous with natural. 



336 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

NATURAL- 

" Whatever ideas, whatever principles we are necessarily led 
to acquire by the circumstances in which we are placed, and by 
the exercise of those faculties which are essential to our pre- 
servation, are to be considered as parts of human nature, no 
less than those which are implanted in the mind at its first 
formation." — Stewart, Act. and Mor. Pow., vol. i., p. 351. 

41 Acquired perceptions and sentiments may be termed na- 
tural, as much as those which are commonly so called, if they 
are as rarely found wanting." — Mackintosh, Prelimin. Dissert., 
p. 67. 

NA-TURAXISRI is the name given to those systems of the philo- 
sophy of nature which explain the phenomena by a blind force 
acting necessarily. This doctrine is to be found in Lucretius, * 
Be Rerum Natura, and was held by Leucippus and Epicurus. 
The Systeme de la Nature of D'Holbach, the Traite de la Nature 
of Robinet, and the PhilosopJiie de la Nature of Delisle de 
Sales, also contain it. 

Naturalism in the fine arts is opposed to idealism. Of Albert 
Durer it is said that "he united to the brilliant delicacies of 
Flemish naturalism the most elevated and varied of Italian 
idealism.''' 1 — Labarte, Handbook of the Middle Ages. 

NATURE (nascor, to be born). — According to its derivation, 
nature should mean that which is produced or born; but it 
also means that which produces or causes to be born. The 
word has been used with various shades of meaning, but they 
may all be brought under two heads, Natura Naturans, and 
Natura Naturata. 

I. Natura Naturans. — a. The Author of nature, the un- 
created Being who gave birth to everything that is. o. The 
plastic nature or energy subordinate to that of the Deity, by 
which all things are conserved and directed to their ends and 
uses. c. The course of nature, or the established order 
according to which the universe is regulated. 

Alii naturam censent esse vim quondam sine Ratione, cientem 
motus in corporibus necessarios ; alii autem vim participem 
ordinis, tanquam via progredientem. — Cicero, De Nat Deorum, 
lib. ii. 

II. Natura Naturata. — a. 1. The works of nature, both mind 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 337 

NATURE — 

and matter. 2. The visible or material creation, as distinct 
from God and the soul, which is the object of natural science. 

u The term nature is used sometimes in a wider, sometimes 
in a narrower extension. When employed in its most extensive 
meaning, it embraces the two worlds of mind and matter. 
When employed in its more restricted signification, it is a 
synonym for the latter only, and is then used in contradistinc- 
tion to the former. In the Greek philosophy, the word <pvat$ 
was general in its meaning; and the great branch of philo- 
sophy, styled 'physical or physiological, 1 included under it not 
only the sciences of matter, but also those of mind. With us, 
the term nature is more vaguely extensive than the terms 
physics, physical, physiology, physiological, or even than the 
adjective, natural ; whereas, in the philosophy of Germany, 
natur and its correlatives, whether of Greek or Latin deriva- 
tion, are, in general, expressive of the world of matter in 
contrast to the world of intelligence." — Sir W. Hamilton, 
ReioVs Woi*ks, p.' 216, note. 

b. Nature as opposed to art, all physical causes, all the forces 
which belong to physical beings, organic or inorganic, c. The 
nature or essence of any particular being or class of beings, 
that which makes it what it is. 

"The word nature has been used in two senses, — viz., 
actively and passively; energetic ( = forma for mans), and 
material ( —forma formata). In the first it signifies the in- 
ward principle of whatever is requisite for the reality of a thing 
as existent; while the essence, or essential property, signifies 
the inner principle of all that appertains to the possibility of a 
thing. Hence, in accurate language, we say the essence of a 
mathematical circle or geometrical figure, not the nature, 
because in the conception of forms, purely geometrical, there 
is no expression or implication of their real existence. In the 
second or material sense of the word nature, we mean by it the 
sum total of all things, as far as they are objects of our senses, 
and consequently of possible experience — the aggregate of 
phenomena, whether existing for our outer senses, or for our 
inner sense. The doctrine concerning nature, would therefore 
(the word physiology being both ambiguous in itself and 



338 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

NATURE— 

already otherwise appropriated) be more properly entitled 
phenomenology, distinguished into its two grand divisions, 
somatology* and psychology."— Coleridge, Friend, p. 410. 
NATURE (Course or Power of>- ^ There is no such thing as 
what men commonly call the course of nature, or the power 
of nature. The course of nature, truly and properly speaking, 
is nothing else but the will of God producing certain effects 
in a continued, regular, constant, and uniform manner ; which 
course or manner of acting, being in every movement per- 
fectly arbitrary, is as easy to be altered at any time as to 
be preserved. And if (as seems most probable), this continual 
acting upon matter be performed by the subserviency of 
created intelligences appointed for that purpose by the Supreme 
Creator, then it is easy for any of them, and as much within 
their natural power (by the permission of God), to alter the 
course of nature at any time, or in any respect, as it is to 
preserve or continue it." — Clarke, Evidences of Nat. and 
Revealed Religion, p. 800, 4th edit. 

" All things are artificial," said Sir Thomas Browne, "for 
nature is the art of God." The antithesis of nature and art 
is a celebrated doctrine in the peripatetic philosophy. Natural 
things are distinguished from artificial, inasmuch as they have, 
what the latter are without, an intrinsic principle of forma- 
tion."— Arist., Be Gen., Anna, ii., c. 1. 

" Nature," said Dr. Eeid (Act. Pow., essay i., ch. 5), "is 
the name we give to the efficient cause of innumerable effects 
which fall daily under observation. But if it be asked what 
nature is? whether the first universal cause f or a subordi- 
nate one ? whether one or many ? whether intelligent or un- 
intelligent ?— upon these points we find various conjectures 
and theories, but no solid ground upon which we can rest. 
And I apprehend the wisest men are they who are sensible 
that they know nothing of the matter. 

The Hon. Eobert Boyle wrote an Enquiry into the vulgarly 
* Both these are included in the title of a work which appeared more than thirty 
years ago,— viz., Somatopsychonologia. 

t Natura est principium et causa efficiens omnium rerum naturalium, quo sensu a veten- 
busphilosophis cum Deo confundebatur. -Cicero, De Nat Deor., lib. i., c.8, and lib. ii., c. 
22, 32. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 339 

NATURE— 

received notion of Nature, in which he attempted to show the 
absurdity of interposing any subordinate energy between the 
Creator and His works, 12mo, Lond., 1785. 
Nature or Force (Plastic) (V?.«<7cr&, to form), was the name 
given by ancient physiologists to a power to which they attri- 
buted the formation of the germs and tissues of organized and 
living beings. In opposition to the doctrine of Democritus, 
who explained all the phenomena of nature by means of matter 
and motion, and in opposition to the doctrine of Strato, who 
taught that matter was the only substance, but in itself a 
living and active force. Cudworth maintained that there is a 
plastic nature, a spiritual energy, intermediate between the 
Creator and His works, by which the phenomena of nature are 
produced. To ascribe these phenomena to the immediate 
agency of Deity would be, he thought, to make the course of 
nature miraculous : and he could not suppose the agency of the 
Deity to be exerted directly, and yet monstrosities and defects 
to be found in the works of nature. How far the facts 
warrant such an hypothesis, or how far such an hypothesis 
explains the facts, may be doubted. But the hypothesis is not 
much different from that of the anima mundi. or soul of matter, 
which had the countenance of Pythagoras and Plato, as well 
as of the school of Alexandria, and later philosophers. — V. 

AfTEMA MUKDI. 

Nature (Philosophy of) The philosophy of nature includes all 

the attempts which have been made to account for the origin 
and on-goings of the physical universe. Some of these have 
been noticed under Matter — q. v. And for an account of the 
various Philosophies of nature, see T. H. Martin, philosophic 
Spiritualistc de la Nature, 2 torn., Paris, 1819; J. B. Stallo, 
A.M., General Principles of Philosoph. of Nature, Lond.. 1S4 V . 
NATURE (Law of).— By the law of Nature is meant that law of 
justice and benevolence which is written on the heart of every 
man. and which teaches him to do to others as he would wish 
that they should do unto him. It was long called the law of 
nature and of nations, because it is natural to men of ail nations.* 

* Quod natuntlis ratio inter omnes homines cons? it u it, idapud om I 
Ctutod mtkm; quasi quo jure omnes Rentes utuntur.~G.ilus. 



340 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

MTUEE — 

But by the phrase law of nations is now meant international 
law, and by the law of nature, natural law. It is not meant 
by the phrase that there is a regular system or code of laws 
made known by the light of nature in which all men every- 
where acquiesce, but that there are certain great principles 
universally acknowledged, and in accordance with which men 
feel themselves bound to regulate their conduct. 

" Why seek the law or rule in the world? What would you 
answer when it is alleged to be within you, if you would only 
listen to it? You are like a dishonest debtor who asks for the 
bill against him when he has it himself. Quod petis intus kabes. 
All the tables of the law, the two tables of Moses, the twelve 
tables of the Romans, and all the good laws in the world, are 
but copies and extracts, which will be produced in judgment 
against thee who hidest the original and pretendest not to 
know what it is, stifling as much as possible that light which 
shines within thee, but which would never have been without 
and humanly published but that that which was within, all 
celestial and divine, had been contemned and forgotten." — 
Charron, De la Sagesse, liv. ii., chap. 3, No. 4. 

According to Grotius, " Jus naturale est dictatum rectce 
rationis, indicans, actui alicui, ex ejus convenientia, vel discon- 
venientia cum ipsa natura rationali, inesse moralem turpitu- 
dinem, aut necessitatem moralem; et consequentef ab author e 
naturce, ipso Deo, talem actum aut vetari aut prozcipiy 

u Jus gentium is used to denote, not international law, but 
positive or instituted law, so far as it is common to all nations. 
When the Romans spoke of international law, they termed it 
Jus Feciale, the law of heralds, or international envoys."— 
Whewell, Morality, No. 1139. 

Selden, De Jure Naturali,]ib. i., c. 3; Grotius, De Jure 
Belli et Pads, Prolegom., sect. 5, 6, lib. L, cap. 1, sect. 10 ; 
PuffendorfF, De Officio Hominis et Civis, lib.iii., c. 3 ; Sanderson, 
De Oblig. Conscientice, Prselect. Quarta, sect. 20-24 ; Tyrell, 
On Law of Nature; Culverwell, Discourse of the Light of 
Nature. 
NATURE (of Things). — The following may be given as an outline 
of the views of those philosophers, Cudworth, Clarke, Price, 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 341 

NATOSE— 

and others, who place the foundation of virtue in the nature, 
reason, and fitness of things : — 

u Everything is what it is, by having a nature. As all 
things have not the same nature, there must be different 
relations, respects, or proportions^ of somethings towards others, 
and a consequent fitness or unfitness, in the application of dif- 
ferent things, or different relations, to one another. It is the 
same with persons. There is & fitness, or suitableness of certain 
circumstances to certain persons, and an un suitableness of others. 
And from the different relations of different persons to one 
another, there necessarily arises a fitness or unfitness of certain 
manners of behaviour of some persons towards others, as well 
as in respect to the things and circumstances with which they 
are surrounded. Now, we stand in various relations to God, 
as our Creator, our Preserver, our Benefactor, our Governor, 
and our Judge. We cannot contemplate these relations, with- 
out seeing or feeling a Rectitude or Rightness in cherishing 
certain affections and discharging certain services towards Him, 
and a Wrongness in neglecting to do so, or in manifesting a 
different disposition, or following a different course of action. 
We stand, also, in various relations to our fellow-creatures ; 
some of them inseparable from our nature and condition as 
human beings, such as the relations of parent and child, 
brother and friend; and others which may be voluntarily 
established, such as the relations of husband and wife, master 
and servant. And we cannot conceive of these relations 
without at the same time seeing a Rectitude or Rightness in 
cherishing suitable affections and following a suitable course 
of action. Not to do so we see and feel to be Wrong. We 
may even be said to stand in various relations to the objects 
around us in the world ; and, when we contemplate our 
nature and condition, we cannot fail to see, in certain manners 
of behaviour, a suitableness or unsuitableness to the circum- 
stances in which we have been placed. Now, Rectitude or 
conformity with those relations which arise from the nature 
and condition of man, is nothing arbitrary or fictitious. It is 
founded in the nature of things. God was under no nee 
to create human beings. But, in calling them into existence, 



342 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

NATUEE- 

he must have given them a nature, and thus have constituted 
the relations in which they stand to Him and to other beings. 
There is a suitableness or congruity, between these relations 
and certain manners of behaviour. Eeason, or the Moral 
Faculty, perceives and approves of this suitableness or con- 
gruity. The Divine mind must do the same, for the relations 
were constituted by God ; and conformity to them must be in 
accordance with His will. So that Conscience, when truly 
enlightened, is a ray from the Divine Reason ; and the moral 
law, which it reveals to us, is Eternal and Immutable as the 
nature of God and the nature of things."— Manual of Mor. 
Phil, p. 124. 

NATURE (Human). — As to the different senses in which nature 
may be understood, and the proper meaning of the maxim, 
Follow nature, — see Butler, Three Sermons on Hum. Nature. 

NECESSITY (ne and cesso, that which cannot cease). — U I have 
one thing to observe of the several kinds of necessity, that the 
idea of some sort of firm connection runs through them all : — - 
and that is the proper general import of the name necessity. 
Connection of mental or verbal propositions, or of their 
respective parts, makes up the idea of logical necessity,-— 
connection of end and means makes up the idea of moral 
necessity, — connection of causes and effects is physical neces- 
sity, and connection of existence and essence is metaphysical 
necessity ." — Waterland, Works, vol. iv., p. 432. 

Logical necessity is that which, according to the terms of 
the proposition, cannot but be. Thus it is necessary that man 
be a rational animal, because these are the terms in which 
he is denned. 

Moral necessity is that without which the effect cannot well 
be, although, absolutely speaking it may. A man who is lame 
is under a moral necessity to use some help, but absolutely he 
may not. 

" The phrase moral necessity is used variously ; sometimes it 
is used for necessity of moral obligation. So we say a man is 
under necessity, when he is under bonds of duty and conscience 
from which he cannot be discharged. Sometimes by moral 
necessity is meant that sure connection of things that is a 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 343 

BttECESSITir— 

foundation for infallible certainty. In this sense moral necessity 
signifies much the same as that high degree of probability, 
which is ordinarily sufficient to satisfy mankind in their con- 
duct and behaviour in the world. Sometimes by moral neces- 
sity is meant that necessity of connection and consequence 
which arises from such moral causes as the strength of inclina- 
tion or motives, and the connection which there is in many 
cases between them, and such certain volitions and actions. It 
is in this sense that I use the phrase moral necessity in the 
following discourse." — Edwards, Works, vol. i., p. 116. 

" By natural (or physical) necessity, as applied to men, I 
mean such necessity as men are under through the force of 
natural causes. Thus men placed in certain circumstances, 
are the subjects of particular sensations by necessity ; they feel 
pain when their bodies are wounded ; they see the objects 
placed before them in a clear light, when their eyes are opened : 
so they assent to the truths of certain propositions as soon as 
the terms are understood ; as that two and two make four, 
that black is not white, that two parallel lines can never cross 
one another ; so by a natural (a physical) necessity men's 
bodies move downwards when there is nothing to support 
them." — Edwards, Works, vol. i., p. 146. 

Necessity is characteristic of ideas and of actions. A neces- 
sary idea is one the contrary of which cannot be entertained 
by the human mind ; as every change implies a cause. Neces- 
sity and universality are the marks of certain ideas which are 
native to the human mind, and not derived from experience. 
A necessary action is one the contrary of which is impossible. 
Necessity is opposed to freedom, or to free-will. — V. Liberty. 

NECESSITY (TOoclriiic of). 

" There are two schemes of necessity, — the necessitation by 
efficient — the necessitation by final causes. The former is brute 
or blind fate ; the latter rational determinism. Though their 
practical results be the same, they ought to be carefully distin- 
guished." — Sir W. Hamilton, Reid's Works, p. 87, note. 

Leibnitz, in his Fifth Paper to Dr. Clarke, p. 157, distin- 
guishes between — 

1. Hypothetical necessity, as opposed to absolute necessity, as 



344 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

NECESSITY— 

that which the supposition or the hypothesis of God's foresight 
and preordination lays upon future contingents. 

2. Logical, metaphysical, or mathematical necessity, which 
takes place because the opposite implies a contradiction ; and 

3. Moral necessity, whereby a wise being chooses the best, 
and every mind follows the strongest inclination. 

Dr. Clarke replies, p. 287, "Necessity, in philosophical 
questions, always signifies absolute necessity. Hypothetical 
necessity and moral necessity are only figurative ways of speak- 
ing, and in philosophical strictness of truth, are no necessity 
at all. The question is not, whether a thing must be, when 
it is supposed that it is, or that it is to be (which is hypo- 
thetical necessity). Neither is the question whether it be true, 
that a good being, continuing to be good, cannot do evil ; or a 
wise being, continuing to be wise, cannot act unwisely ; or a 
veracious person, continuing to be veracious, cannot tell a lie 
(which is moral necessity). But the true and only question in 
philosophy concerning liberty, is, whether the immediate phy- 
sical cause, or principle of action be indeed in him whom we 
call the agent ; or whether it be some other reason, which is 
the real cause by operating upon the agent, and making him 
to be not indeed an agent, but a mere patient ." 
NECESSITY (Logical). 

" The scholastic philosophers have denominated one species 
of necessity — necessitas consequential, and another — necessitas 
consequentis. The former is an ideal or formal necessity ; the 
inevitable dependence of one thought upon another, by reason 
of our intelligent nature. The latter is a real or material 
necessity ; the inevitable dependence of one thing upon another 
because of its own nature. The former is a logical necessity, 
common to all legitimate consequence, whatever be the material 
modality of its objects. The latter is an extra-logical necessity, 
over and above the syllogistic inference, and wholly dependent 
upon the modality of the consequent. This ancient distinction 
modern philosophers have not only overlooked but confounded. 
(See contrasted the doctrines of the Aphrodisian, and of Mr. 
Dugald Stewart, in Dissertatio7is on Reid, p. 701, note). — Sir 
William Hamilton, Discussions, p. 144. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 345 

NEGATION (nego, to deny), is the absence of that which does not 
naturally belong to the thing we are speaking of, or which has 
no right, obligation, or necessity to be present with it ; as when 
we say — A stone is inanimate, or blind, or deaf, that is, has no 
life, nor sight, nor hearing ; or when we say — A carpenter or 
fisherman is unlearned ; these are mere negations. — Watts, 
Log., part i., chap. 2, sect. 6. 

According to Thomas Aquinas (Summa, p. i., qu. 48, art. 5) 
simple negation denies to a thing some certain realities which 
do not belong to the nature of the same. Privation, on the 
contrary, is deficiency in some reality which belongs to the 
notion of the being. — V. Privation. 

In simple apprehension there is no affirmation or denial, 
so that, strictly speaking, there are no negative ideas, notions, 
or conceptions. In truth, some that are so called represent 
the most positive realities ; as infinity, immensity, immortality, 
&c. But in some ideas, as in that of blindness, deafness, in- 
sensibility, there is, as it were, a taking away of something 
from the object of which these ideas are entertained. But this 
is privation {arkpYinn) rather than negation (oLirotyauii). And 
in general it may be said that negation implies some anterior 
conception of the object of which the negation is made. Abso- 
lute negation is impossible. We have no idea of nothing. It 
is but a word. — Diet, des Sciences Philosopli, 
NIHIIjISJY£ (nihil, nihilum, nothing), is scepticism carried to the 
denial of all existence. 

"The sum total," says Fichte, <c is this. There is absolutely 
nothing permanent either without me or within me, but only 
an unceasing change. I know absolutely nothing of any ex- 
istence, not even of my own. I myself know nothing, and am 
nothing. Images (Bilder) there are ; they constitute all that 
apparently exists, and what they know of themselves is after 
the manner of images ; images that pass and vanish without 
there being aught to witness their transition ; that consist in 
fact of the images of images, without significance and without 
an aim. I myself am one of these images ; nay, I am not even 
thus much, but only a confused image of images. All reality 
is converted into a marvellous dream without a life to dream oi\ 
and without a mind to dream ; into a dream made up only of 



346 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

NIHILISM— 

a dream itself. Perception is a dream ; thought, the source of 
all the existence and all the reality which I imagine to myself 
of my existence, of my power, of my destination — is the dream 
of that dream." — Sir William Hamilton, Reid's Works, p. 129, 
note. 

In like manner, Mr. Hume resolved the phenomena of 
consciousness into impressions and ideas. And as according 
to Berkeley, sensitive impressions were no proof of external 
realities, so according to Hume, ideas do not prove the exis- 
tence of mind — so that there is neither matter nor mind, for 
anything that we can prove. 

NlffiiXUM or NOTHING " is that of which everything can 
truly be denied, and nothing can be truly affirmed. So that 
the idea of nothing (if I may so speak) is absolutely the nega- 
tion of all ideas. The idea, therefore, either of a finite or 
infinite nothing, is a contradiction in terms." — Clarke, Answer 
to Seventh Letter, note. 

Nothing, taken positively, is what does not but may exist, 
as a river of milk — taken negatively, it is that which does not 
and cannot exist, as a square circle, a mountain without a 
valley. Nothing positively is ens potentiate, Nothing nega- 
tively is non ens, 

NOJJllNAiiiSiHE (nomen, a name), is the doctrine that general 
notions, such as the notion of a tree, have no realities cor- 
responding to them, and have no existence but as names 
or words. The doctrine directly opposed to it is realism. 
To the intermediate doctrine of conceptualism, nominalism is 
closely allied. It may be called the envelope of conceptualism, 
while conceptualism is the letter or substance of nominalism. 
44 If nominalism sets out from conceptualism, conceptualism 
should terminate in nominalism," says Mons. Cousin, Introd. 
aux ouvrages inedits cV Abailaird, 4to, Paris, 1836, p. 181. 

Universalia ante rem, is the watchword of the Realists', 
Universalia in re, of the Conceptualists ; Universalia post rem, 
of the Nominalists. The Nominalists were called Terminists 
about the time of the Reformation. — Ballantyne, Examin. of 
Hum. Mind, chap. 3, sect. 4. 

" The Terminists, among whom I was, are so called be- 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 347 

NOlTIINAIilSUI— 

cause they speak of a thing in its own proper words, and 
do not apply them after a strange sort. They are also called 
Occamists, from Ockham their founder. He was an able and 
a sensible man." — Luther, Table Talk, p. 540-2. 

In asserting that universals existed, but only in the mind, 
Ockham agreed exactly with the modern Concept ualists. — V. 
Universals. 

NON SECfcUlTUlfc (it does not follow ; the inference is not 
necessary.) — It is sometimes used as a substantive ; and an 
inconclusive inference is called a non sequitur. 

NOOGJ-ONIE (vov;, mind; yovos, birth, or generation). — " Leib- 
nitz has intellectualized sensations, Locke has sensualized 
notions, in that system which I might call a noogonie, in 
place of admitting two different sources of our representa- 
tions, which are objectively valid only in their connection.*' 
— Kant, Crit. de la Raison Pure, pp. 326, 327. 

IVOOIiOCHT (uov;, mind ; "koyos), is a term proposed by Mons. 
Paffe (Sur la Sensibilite, p. 30), to denote the science of intel- 
lectual facts, or the facts of intellect; and pathology {psycho- 
logical), to denote the science of the phenomenes affectifs, or 
feeling, or sensibility. 

The use of the term is noticed by Sir "W. Hamilton (Reid's 
Works, note A, sect. 5, p. 770), as the title given to Treatises 
on the doctrine of First Principles, by Calovius, in 1651 ; 
Mejerus, in 1662 ; Wagnerus, in 1670 ; and Zeidlerus, in 
3 680 — and he has said, " The correlatives noetic and dia~ 
noetic would afford the best philosophical designations, the 
former for an intuitive principle, or truth at first hand ; the 
latter for a demonstrative proposition, or truth at second 
hand. Noology or noological, dianoialogy and dianoialogical, 
would be also technical terms of much convenience in various 
departments of philosophy." 

Mons. Ampere proposed to designate the sciences which 
treat of the human mind Les sciences Noologiques. 

u If, instead of considering the objects of our knowledge, we 
consider its origin, it may be said that it is either derived from 
experience alone, or from reason alone; hence empirical philo- 
sophers and those which Kant calls nookgistt: at their head 



348 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

NOOJLOG-Y— 

are Aristotle and Plato among the ancients, and Locke and 
Leibnitz among the moderns." — Henderson, Philosoph. of 
Kant, p. 172. 

NORM {norma, from yvaypog, a square or rule of builders), is used 
as synonymous with law. Anything not in accordance with 
the law is said to be abnormal. 

" There is no uniformity, no norma, principle, or rule, per- 
ceivable in the distribution of the primeval natural agents 
through the universe." — Mill, Log., b. iii., ch. 16, § 3. 

NOTION (nosco, to know). — Bolingbroke says (Essay i., On Human 
Knowledge, sect. 2), "I distinguish here between ideas and 
notions, for it seems to me, that, as we compound simple into 
complex ideas, so the composition we make of simple and com- 
plex ideas maybe called, more properly, and with less confusion 
and ambiguity, notions." 

Mr. Locke says {Essay on Hum. Understand., book ii., ch. 
22), " The mind being once furnished with simple ideas, it can 
put them together in several compositions, and so make variety 
of complex ideas, without examining whether they exist so 
together in nature, and hence I think it is that these ideas are 
called notions, as they had their original and constant existence 
more in the thoughts of men than in the reality of things." 

"The distinction of ideas, strictly so called, and notions, is 
one of the most common and important in the philosophy of 
mind. Nor do we owe it, as has been asserted, to Berkeley. 
It was virtually taken by Descartes and the Cartesians, in their 
discrimination of ideas of imagination, and ideas of intelligence ; 
it was in terms vindicated against Locke, by Serjeant, Stilling - 
fleet, ISTorris, Z. Mayne, Bishop Brown, and others. Bonnet 
signalized it ; and under the contrast of Anschauungen and 
Begriffe, it has long been an established and classical discrim- 
ination with the philosophers of Germany. Nay, Beid himself 
suggests it in the distinction he requires between imagination 
and conception, — a distinction which he unfortunately did not 
carry out, and which Mr. Stewart still more unhappily per- 
verted. The terms notion and conception (or more correctly 
concept in this sense), should be reserved to express what we 
comprehend but cannot picture in imagination, such as a rela- 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 349 

notion-— 

tion, a general term, &c. The word idea, as one prostituted 
to all meanings, it were better to discard. As for the repre- 
sentations of imagination or phantasy, I would employ the term 
image or phantasm, it being distinctly understood that these 
terms are applied to denote the representations not of our 
visible perceptions merely, as the term taken literally would 
indicate, but of our sensible perceptions in general." — Sir Will. 
Hamilton, Reid's Woks, p. 291, note. 

Notion is more general in its signification than idea. Idea 
is merely a conception, or at most a necessary and universal 
conception. Notion implies all this and more, — a judgment or 
series of judgments, and a certain degree of knowledge of the 
object. Thus we speak of having no notion or knowledge of a 
thing, and of having some notion or knowledge. It began to 
be used by Descartes in his Regulce ad Directionem Ingenii, and 
soon came into current use among French philosophers. It 
enables us to steer clear of the ideas of Plato, of the species of 
the scholastics, and of the images of the empirical school. Hence 
Dr. Reid tells us that he used it in preference. — Diet, des 
Sciences Pliilosopli. 

Des Maistre (Soirees de St. Peter sbourgli, p. 164), uses the 
French word notion as synonymous with pure idea, or innate 
idea, underived from sense, 

Chalybaeus, in a letter to Mr. Eddersheim (the translator of 
his work), says, " In English as in French, the word idea, idee, 
is applied, without distinction, to a representation, to a notion, 
in short to every mental conception; while in German, in 
scientific language, a very careful distinction is made between 
sensuous l vorstellung ' (representation), abstract c verstandes- 
begriff' (intellectual notion), and l ideen' (ideas), of reason." 

Notions or concepts are clear and distinct, or obscure and 
indistinct. u A concept is said to be clear when the degree of 
consciousness is such as enables us to distinguish it as a whole 
from others, and obscure when the degree of consciousness is 
insufficient to accomplish this. A concept is said to be distinct 
when the amount of consciousness is such as enables us to dis- 
criminate from each other the several characters or constituent 
parts of which the concept is the sum, and indistinct or confused 



350 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

NOTION— 

when the amount of consciousness requisite for this is wanting." 
In the darkness of night there is no perception of objects, this 
is obscurity. As light dawns we begin to see objects, this is 
indistinctness. As morning advances we make a distinction 
between trees and houses, and fields and rivers, as wholes 
differing from one another, this is clearness. At length when 
day approaches noon, we see the parts which make up the 
wholes, and have a distinct view of everything before us. 

We have a clear notion of colours, smells, and tastes ; for 
we can discriminate red from white, bitter from sweet. But 
we have not a distinct notion of them, for we are not acquainted 
with the qualities which form the difference ; neither can we 
describe them to such as cannot see, smell, and taste. We 
have a clear notion of a triangle when we discriminate it from 
other figures. We have a distinct notion of it when we think 
of it as a portion of space bounded by three straight lines, as a 
figure whose three angles taken together are equal to two 
right angles. 
Wiv&t Notions and Second Notions. 

The distinction (which we owe to the Arabians) of first and 
second notions (notiones, conceptus, intentiones, intellecta prima 
et secundd) is a highly philosophical determination.* .... 
A first notion is the concept of a thing as it exists of itself f and 
independent of any operation of thought ; as man, John, 
animal, &c. A second notion is the concept, not of an object 
as it is in reality, but of the mode under which it is thought by 
the mind; as individual, species, genus, &c. The former is the 
concept of a thing, real, immediate, direct: the latter the concept 
of a concept, formal, mediate, reflex.'''' — Sir William Hamilton, 
Discussions, p. 137. 

u Notions are of two kinds ; they either have regard to things 
as they are, as horse, ship, tree, and are called first notions ; 
or to things as they are understood, as notions of genus, species, 
attribute, subject, and in this respect are called second notions, 
which, however, are based upon the first, and cannot be con- 
* The Americans call a cargo of fashionable goods, trinkets, &c, being " laden with 

notions" and on being hailed by our ships, a fellow (without an idea perhaps in his 

head) will answer through a speaking trumpet that he is " laden with notions."'— Moore, 

Diary, p. 249. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 351 

NOTION— 

ceived without them. Now logic is not so much employed 
upon first notions of things as upon second ; that is, it is not 
occupied so much with things as they exist in nature, but with 
the way in which the mind conceives them. A logician has 
nothing to do with ascertaining whether a horse, or a ship, or 
a tree exists, but whether one of these things can be regarded 
as a genus or species, whether it can be called a subject or an 
attribute, whether from the conjunction of many second notions 
a proposition, a definition, or a syllogism can be formed. The 
first intention of every word is its real meaning ; the second 
intention, its logical value according to the function of thought 
to which it belongs."* — Thomson, Outline of the Laws of 
Thought, 2d ed., pp. 39, 40. — V. Intention. 

Notions, Intuitive and Symbolical 

Leibnitz was the first to employ intuitive and intuition to 
denote our direct ostensive cognitions of an individual object 
either in sense or imagination, and in opposition to our indirect 
and symbolical cognitions acquired through the use of signs or 
language in the understanding. 

u When our notion of any object or objects consists of a 
clear insight into all its attributes, or at least the essential 
ones, he would call it intuitive. But where the notion is com- 
plex and its properties numerous, we do not commonly realize 
all that it conveys ; the powers of thinking would be needlessly 
retarded by such a review. We think more compencliously 
by putting a symbol in the place of all the properties of our 
notion, and this naturally is the term by which we are accus- 
tomed to convey the notion to others. A name, then, 
employed in thought is called a symbolical cognition; and 
the names we employ in speech are not always symbols to 
another of what is explicitly understood by us, but quite as 
often are symbols both to speaker and hearer, the full and 
exact meaning of which neither of them stop to unfold, any 
more than they regularly reflect that every sovereign which 

* " See Buhle (Arist., 1, p. 432), whose words I have followed. See also Cracanthorp 
(Log. Proem.), and Sir W. Hamilton (Edin. Rev., No. 115, p. 210). There is no authority 
whatever for Aldrich's view, which makes second intention mean, apparently, 'a term 
defined for scientific use;' though with the tenacious vitality of error it still lingers 
in some quarters, after wounds that should have been mortal."— V. INTBHTION. 



352 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

NOTlONh- 

passes through their hands is equiavlent to 240 pence. Such 
words as the State, Happiness, Liberty, Creation, are too preg- 
nant with meaning for us to suppose that we realize their full 
sense every time we read or pronounce them. If we attend 
to the working of our minds, we shall find that each word may 
be used, and in its proper place and sense, though perhaps few 
or none of its attributes are present to us at the moment. A 
very simple notion is always intuitive; we cannot make our 
notion of brown or red simpler than it is by any symbol. On 
the other hand, a highly complex notion, like those named 
above, is seldom fully realized — seldom other than symbolical." 
— Thomson, Outline of the Laws of Thought, p. 47. 

NOTIONE® commune®, also called prcenotiones, anticipationes, 
communes notitice, trQoKyipeis, x-on/ul huotott — first truths, natural 
judgments, principles of common sense, are phrases employed 
to denote certain notions or cognitions which are native to 
the human mind, which are intuitively discerned, being clear 
and manifest in their own light, and needing no proof, but 
forming the ground of proof and evidence as to other truths. — 
V. Anticipation, Truths (First). 

WOUJI JENOW (to voovpsvov), in the philosophy of Kant (an object 
as conceived by the understanding, or thought of by the reason, 
vovg), is opposed to phenomenon (an object such as we repre- 
sent it to ourselves by the impression which it makes on our 
senses). Noumenon is an object in itself, not relatively to us. 
But we have, according to Kant, no such knowledge of things 
in themselves. For besides the impressions which things make 
on us, there is nothing in us but the forms of the sensibility 
and the categories of the understanding, according to which, 
and not according to the nature of things in themselves, it may 
be, are our conceptions of them. 

Things sensible considered as in themselves and not as they 
appear to us, Kant calls negative noumena; and reserves the 
designation of positive noumena, to intelligibles properly so 
called, which are the objects of an intuition purely intellectual. 
— Willm, Hist, de la Philosoph. Allemande, torn, i., p. 200. 

The two kinds of noumena taken together are opposed to 
phenomena, and form the intelligible world. This world we 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 353 

UTOUMEN— 

admit as possible, but unknown. Kantism thus trends towards 
scepticism. 

"The word phenomenon has no meaning except as opposed 
to something intelligible — to a noumenon, as Kant says. Now, 
either we understand by the latter word a thing which cannot 
be the object of a sensuous intuition, without determining the 
mode in which it is perceived, and in this case we take it in 
a negative sense ; or we understand it as the object of a real 
intuition, though not a sensuous one, an intellectual one, and 
then we take it in a positive sense. Which of these two is 
truth ? It cannot unquestionably be affirmed a priori that the 
only possible manner of perception is sensuous intuition, and 
it implies no contradiction to suppose that an object may be 
known to us otherwise than by the senses. But, says Kant, 
this is only a possibility. To justify us in affirming that there 
really is any other mode of perception than sensuous intuition, 
any intellectual intuition, it must come within the range of our 
knowledge ; and in fact we have no idea of any such faculty. 
We, therefore, cannot adopt the word noumenon in any positive 
sense ; it expresses but an indeterminate object, not of an 
intuition, but of a conception — in other words a hypothesis of 
the understanding." — Henderson, Philosophy of Kant, p. 76. — 
F. Phenomenon. 
BTOVEIiTY (novus, new), " is not merely a sensation in the mind 
of him to whom the thing is new ; it is a real relation which 
the thing has to his knowledge at that time. But we are so 
constituted, that what is new to us commonly gives pleasure 
upon that account, if it be not in itself disagreeable. It rouses 
our attention, and occasions an agreeable exertion of our facul- 
ties Curiosity is a capital principle in the human 

constitution, and its food must be what is in some respect new. 
. . . . Into this part of the human constitution, I think, 
we may resolve the pleasure we have from novelty in objects." — 
Reid, Intell. Pow., essay viii., chap. 2. 

Any new or strange object, whether in nature or in art, 
when contemplated gives rise to feelings of a pleasing kind, 
the consideration of which belongs to ^Esthetics — or that de- 
partment of philosophy which treats of the Powers of Taste. 
2 a 



354 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

NUMBER was held by Pythagoras to be the ultimate principle 
of being. His views -were adopted to a certain extent by 
Plato, and attacked by Aristotle. In the Middle Ages, num- 
bers and the proportions subsisting between them, were 
employed in the systems of the alchemists and cabalists. But 
in proportion as the true spirit of philosophy prevailed, num- 
bers were banished from metaphysics, and the consideration 
of them was allotted to a separate science — arithmetic and 
algebra. 



OATH. — An oath is a solemn appeal to God, as the author of 
all that is true and right, and a solemn promise to speak the 
truth and to do what is right ; renouncing the divine favour 
and imprecating the divine vengeance, should we fail to do 
so. Oaths have been distinguished as — 1. The assertory, or 
oath of evidence, and 2. The promissory, or oath of office — 
the former referring to the past, and the latter to the future. 
But both refer to the future, inasmuch as both are confirma- 
tory of a promise, to give true evidence, or to do faithful 
service. — V. Affirmation. 

OBJECTIVE (objicio, to throw against), is now used to describe 
the absolute independent state of a thing ; but by the elder 
metaphysicians it was applied to the aspect of things as objects 
of sense or understanding. So Berkeley, " Natural pheno- 
mena are only natural appearances. They are, therefore, such 
as we see and perceive them. Their real and objective natures 
are, therefore, one and the same." Siris, sect. 292, where 
real and objective are expressly distinguished. The modern 
nomenclature appears to me very inconvenient. — Fitzgerald, 
Notes to Aristotle, p. 191. 

With Aristotle viroxeipevov signified the subject of a pro- 
position, and also substance. The Latins translated it subjec- 
tum. In Greek object is dt/rtKsi^svou, translated oppositum. 
In the Middle Ages subject meant substance, and has this 
sense in Descartes and Spinoza; sometimes also in Beid. 
Subjective is used by Will. Occam to denote that which exists 
independent of mind, objective that which the mind feigned. 
This shows what is meant by realitas objectiva in Descartes 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 355 

OBJECTIVE— 

(Med. 3). Kant and Ficlite have inverted the meanings: 

:i is the mind which knows — object that which is known. 

Subjective the varying conditions of the knowing mind — objec- 

that which is in the constant nature of the thing known. 

— Trendelenburg, Notes io Aristotle's Logic. 

By objective reality Descartes meant the reality of the object 
in so tar as represented by the idea or thought of it — by 
formal or actual reality the reality of the object as conform 
to our idea of it. Thus the sun was objectively in our thought 
or idea of it — actually or formally in the heavens. He had 
also a third form of reality which he called eminent — that is. an 
existence superior at once to the idea and the object, and 
which contained in posse what both these had in esse. — Re- 
sponse a la Seconde Objection. 

1 ' In philosophical language, it were to be wished that the 
'ect should be reserved for the subject of inhesion — 
the materia in qua; and the term object exclusively applied to 
the subject of operation — the materia circa quam. If this be 
not done, the grand distinction of subjective and objective, in 
philosophy, is confounded. But if the employment of subject 
for object is to be deprecated, the employment of object for 
purpose or final cause (in the French and English languages) 
is to be absolutely condemned, as a recent and irrational 
confusion of notions which should be carefully distinguished. 1, 
— Sir W. Hamilton, Retd's Works, p, 97, and App., note e. — 
V. Subject. 
OBLIGATION (obligo, to bind), is legal or moral. 

'ligation, as used in moral inquiry, is derived from the 

rine of justification in the scholastic ages. In consequence 

of original sin man comes into the world a debtor to divine 

ice. He is under an obligation to punishment, on account 

of hi- from that form of original justice in which he 

rendered to God all that service of love which the great good- 

of God demanded. Hence our terms due and duty, to 

express right conduct." — Hampden, Rampton Leet.< vi., p 

Obligation (Jloral) has been distinguished as internal and 

i for acting arises in the mind 
of the agent, or from the will of another. 



356 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

OBLIGATION- 

In seeing a thing to be right we are under obligation to do 
it. This is internal obligation, or that reason for acting which 
arises in the mind of the agent, along with the perception of 
the Tightness of the action. It is also called rational obligation. 
Dr. Adams (Sermon on the Nature and Obligation of Virtue) 
has said, " Right implies duty in its idea. To perceive that an 
action is right, is to see a reason for doing it in the action 
itself, abstracted from all other considerations whatever. Now, 
this perception, this acknowledged rectitude in the action, is 
the very essence of obligation ; that which commands the ap- 
probation of choice, and binds the conscience of every rational 
being." And Mr. Stewart (Act. and Mor. Pow., vol. ii., p. 
294) has said, "The very notion of virtue implies the notion 
of obligation." 

External obligation is a reason for acting which arises from 
the will of another, having authority to impose a law. It is 
also called authoritative obligation. Bishop Warburton (Diu. 
Leg., book i., sect. 4) has contended that all obligation neces- 
sarily implies an obliger different from the party obliged ; and 
moral obligation, being the obligation of a free agent, implies a 
law ; and a law implies a lawgiver. The will of God, there- 
fore, is the true ground of all obligation, strictly and properly 
so called. The perception of the difference between right and 
wrong can be said to oblige only as an indication of the will of 
God. 

There is no incompatibility between these two grounds of 
obligation. — See Whewell, Sermons on the Foundation of Morals, 
pp. 26-76. And Dr. Chalmers, Bridgewater Treatise, vol. L, 
p. 78. 

By some philosophers, however, this stream of living waters 
has been parted. They have grounded obligation altogether 
on the will of God, and have overlooked or made light of 
the obligation which arises from our perception of rectitude. 
Language to this effect has been ascribed to Mr. Locke. 
(Life by Lord King, vol. ii., p. 129.) And both Warburton 
and Horsley, as well as Paley and his followers, have given 
too much, if not an exclusive, prominence to the rewards and 
punishments of a future life, as prompting to the practice of 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 357 

OBLIGATION- 

virtue. But, although God, in accommodation to the weak- 
ness of our nature and the perils of our condition, has con- 
descended to quicken us, in the discharge of our duty, by 
appealing to our hopes and fears, both in regard to the life 
that now is and that which is to come, it does not follow that 
self-love, or a concern for our own happiness, should be the 
only, or even the chief spring, of our obedience. On the con- 
trary, obedience to the divine will may spring from venera- 
tion and love to the divine character, arising from the most 
thorough conviction of the rectitude, wisdom, and goodness of 
the divine arrangements. And that this, more than a regard to 
the rewards of everlasting life, is the proper spring of virtuous 
conduct, is as plain as it is important to remark. To do what is 
right, even for the sake of everlasting life, is evidently acting 
from a motive far inferior, in purity and power, to love and 
veneration for the character and commands of Him who is just 
and good, in a sense and to an extent to which our most ele- 
vated conceptions are inadequate. That which should bind us 
to the throne of the Eternal is not the iron chain of selfishness, 
but the golden links of a love to all that is right ; and our 
aspirations to the realms of bliss should be breathings after the 
prevalence of universal purity, rather than desires of our own 
individual happiness. Self and its little circle is too narrow 
to hold the heart of man, when it is touched with a sense of 
its true dignity, and enlightened with the knowledge of its lofty 
destination. It swells with generous admiration of all that is 
■ right and good; and expands with a love which refuses to 
acknowledge any limits but the limits of life and the capacities 
of enjoyment. In the nature and will of Him from whom 
all being and all happiness proceed, it acknowledges the only 
proper object of its adoration and submission ; and in sur- 
rendering itself to His authority is purified from all the dross 
of selfishness, and cheered by the light of a calm and unquench- 
able love to all that is right and good. 

See Sanderson, De Juramenti Obligatione, praelec. i., sect. 11 ; 
De Ohligatione Conscientice, prselec. v. ; Whewell, Morality, 
book i., chap. 4, pp. 84-89; King, Essay on Evil, Prelim. 
Dissert., sect. 2. — V. Right , Sanction. 



358 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

OBSERVATION. — " The difference between experiment and 
observation, consists merely in the comparative rapidity with 
which they accomplish their discoveries ; or rather in the 
comparative command we possess over them, as instruments 
for the investigation of truth." — Stewart, Philosoph. Essays, 
Prelim. Dissert., chap. 2. 

Mr. Stewart {Elements, vol. i., p. 106, note) has said, that 
according to Dr. Reid, u Attention to external things is obser- 
vation, and attention to the subjects of our own consciousness 
is reflection. Yet Dr. Eeid (Intell. Povj., essay vi., chap- 1) 
has said, that "reflection, in its common and proper meaning, 
is equally applicable to objects of sense and to objects of con- 
sciousness — and has censured Locke for restricting it to that 
reflection which is employed about the operations of our 
minds. In like manner we may observe the operations of our 
own minds as well as external phenomena. Observation is 
better characterized by Sir John Herschell as passive expe- 
rience. — V. Experience. 

It is the great instrument of discovery in mind and matter, 
According to some (Edin. Rev., vol. iii., p. 269), experiment can 
be applied to matter, but only observation to mind. But to 
a certain extent the study of mind admits experiment. See 
Hampden, Introd. to Mor. Phil, sect, ii., p. 51 ; and Mr. 
Stewart, Philosoph. Essays, Prelim. Dissert,, chap. 2. 

" We can scarcely be said to make experiments on the 
minds of others. It is necessary to an experiment, that the 
observer should know accurately the state of the thing observed 
before the experiment, and its state immediately after it. But 
when the minds of other men are the subject, we can know 
but little of either the one state or of the other. We are 
forced, therefore, to rely not on experiment, but on experi- 
ence ; that is to say, not on combinations of known elements 
eifected for the purpose of testing the result of each different 
combination ; but on our observation of actual occurrences, 
the results of the combination of numerous elements, only a 
few of which are within our knowledge. And the consequence 
is, that we frequently connect facts which are really independent 
of one another, and not unfrequently mistake obstacles for 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 359 

OBSERVATION— 

" When we direct our attention to the workings of our own 
minds ; that is to say, when we search for premises by means 
of consciousness instead of by means of observation, our powers 
of trying experiments are much greater. To a considerable 
degree we command our own faculties, and though these are 
few, perhaps none which we can use separately, we can at 
will exercise one more vigorously than the others. We can 
call, for instance, into peculiar activity, the judgment, the 
memory, or the imagination, and note the differences in our 
mental condition as the one faculty or the other is more 
active. And this is an experiment. Over our mental sen- 
sations we have less power. We cannot at will feel angry, or 
anxious, or frightened ; but we can sometimes, though rarely, 
put ourselves really into situations by which certain emotions 
will be excited. And when, as is usually the case, this is 
impossible or objectionable, we can fancy ourselves in such 
situations. The first is an actual experiment. We can ap- 
proach the brink of an unprotected precipice and look down — 
we can interpose between our bodies and that brink a low 
parapet, and look over it, and if we find that our condition 
in the two cases differ, that though there is no real danger 
in either case, though in both our judgment equally tells us 
that we are safe, yet that the apparent danger in the one 
produces fear, while we feel secure in the other, we infer that 
the imagination can excite fear for which the judgment affirms 
that there is no adequate cause. The second is the resem- 
blance of an experiment, and which when tried by a person 
with the vivid imagination of Shakspeare or Homer, may serve 
for one ; but with ordinary minds it is a fallacious expedient. 
Few men, when they picture themselves in an imaginary 
situation, take into account all the incidents necessary to that 
situation ; and those which they neglect may be the most 
important." — Senior, Four Lectures on Pol. Econ., 1852, 
p. 31. 

" Instead of contrasting observation and experiment, we 
should contrast spontaneous and experimental phenomena 
as alike subjects of observation. Facts furnished by artificial 
contrivances require to be observed just in the same way as 



360 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

OBSERVATION— 

those which are presented by nature without our interference ; 
and yet philosophers are nearly unanimous in confining 
observation to the latter phenomena, and speaking of it as of 
something which ceases where experiment begins ; while in 
simple truth, the business of experiment is to extend the 
sphere of observation, and not to take up a subject where 
observation lays it down." — S. Bailey, Theory of Reasoning, 
pp. 114-15, 8vo, Lond., 1851. 

All men are apt to notice likenesses in the facts that come 
before them, and to group similar facts together. The faculty 
by which such similarities are apprehended is called observa- 
tion; the act of grouping them together under a general 
statement, as when we say, " All seeds grow — all bodies 
fall," has been described as generalization — V. Generaliza- 
tion. 

According to M. Comte (Cours de PhilosopJi. Positive, torn, 
ii., p. 19) there are three modes of observation : — 1. Observa- 
tion, properly so called, or the direct examination of the 
phenomenon as it presents itself naturally. 2. Experiment, or 
the contemplation of the phenomenon, so modified more or 
less by artificial circumstances introduced intentionally by 
ourselves, with a view to its more complete investigation. 3. 
Comparison, or the successive consideration of a series of 
analogous cases, in which the phenomenon becomes more and 
more simple. The third head (as to which see torn, iii., p. 
343) seems not so much a species of observation, as a mode of 
arranging observations, with a view to a proper investigation 
of the phenomena. — Sir G. C. Lewis, Meth. of Observ. in 
Politics, chap. 5, note. 

According to Humboldt (Cosmos, vol. ii., p. 212) there are 
three stages of the investigation of nature — passive observa- 
tion, active observation, and experiment. 

The difference between active and passive observation is 
marked in Bacon (Nov. Org., 1, Aphor. 100). The former is 
when Experientia lege certa procedit, seriatim et continenter. 

" This word experimental has the defect of not appearing to 
comprehend the knowledge which flows from observation, as 
well as that which is obtained by experiment. The German 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 361 

OBSERVATION— 

word empirical is applied to all the information which experi- 
ence affords ; but it is in our language degraded by another 
application. I therefore must use experimental in a larger 
sense than its etymology warrants." — Sir J. Mackintosh, On 
Bacon and Locke, Works, vol. i., p. 333. 

Experiential has been proposed as equivalent to empirical. 
OCCASION. — Cicero (1. Be Inventione) says : — Occasio est pars 
temporis, liabens in se alicujus rei idoneam faciendi opportuni- 
tatem. (De Ojfic, lib. i.) Tempus autem actionis opportunum, 
Graece, ivkolioIa ; Latine, appellatur occasio. The watchman 
falling asleep gives occasion to thieves to break into the house 
and steal. 

" There is much difference between an occasion and a 
proper cause: these two are needfully to be distinguished. 
Critical and exact historians, as Polybius and Tacitus, dis- 
tinguish betwixt the d^xi an d the cctrix, the beginning occa- 
sions and the real causes, of a war." — Flavell, Discourse of 
the Occasions, Causes, Nature, Rise, Groicih, and Remedies of 
Mental Errors. 

" What is caused seems to follow naturally; what is occa- 
sioned follows incidentally, and what is created receives its 
existence arbitrarily. A wound causes pain, accidents occa- 
sion delay, scandal creates mischief. 

" Between the real cause and the occasion of any pheno- 
menon, there is a wide diversity. The one implies the pro- 
ducing power, the other only some condition upon which this 
power comes into exercise. If I cast a grain of corn into the 
earth, the occasion of its springing up and producing plant, 
ear, and grain, is the warmth and moisture of the soil in which 
it is buried ; but this is by no means the cause. The cause 
lies in the mysterious vital power which the seed contains 
within itself; the other is but the condition upon which this 
cause produces the effect." — Morell, Specul. Phil, vol. i., 
p. 99. 
OCCASIONAL CAUSES (Ooctrine of).-— V. CAUSE. 
OCCULT QUALITIES.— V. QUALITY. 

ONE — V. Unity. 

ONEIROJIANCY.— V. DREAMING. 



36*2 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

ONTOLOGY (ov and 7i6yo?, the science of being). — " Ontology 
is a discourse of being in general, and the various or most 
universal modes or affections, as well as the several kinds 
or divisions of it. The word being here includes not only 
whatsoever actually is, but whatsoever can be." — Watts, 
On Ontology, c. 1. — See also Smith, Wealth of Nations, book 
v., c. 1. 

Ontology is the same as metaphysics. Neither the one name 
nor the other was used by Aristotle. He called the science now 
designated by them philosophia prima, and defined it as Wi- 
GTvifAYi 7ov outos fi 6'i/ros — Scientia Entis Quatenus Entis, that is, 
the science of the essence of things ; the science of the attri- 
butes and conditions of being in general, not of being in any 
given circumstances, not as physical or mathematical, but as 
being. The name ontology seems to have been first made 
current in philosophy by Wolf. He divided metaphysics into 
four parts — ontology, psychology, rational cosmology, and 
theology. It was chiefly occupied with abstract inquiries into 
possibility, necessity, and contingency, substance, accident, 
cause, &c., without reference to the laws of our intellect by 
which we are constrained to believe in them. Kant denied 
that we had any knowledge of substance or cause as really 
existing. But there is a science of principles and causes, of 
the principles of being and knowing. In this view of it, 
ontology corresponds with metaphysics — q. v. 

** Ontology may be treated of in two different methods, 
according as its exponent is a believer in to ov, or in t<& 
outu, in one or in many fundamental principles of things. In 
the former, all objects whatever are regarded as phenomenal 
modifications of one and the same substance, or as self- 
determined effects of one and the same cause. The necessary 
result of this method is to reduce all metaphysical philosophy 
to a Rational Theology, the one substance or Cause being 
identified with the Absolute or the Deity. According to the 
latter method, which professes to treat of different classes of 
beings independently, metaphysics will contain three co-ordi- 
nate branches of inquiry, Rational Cosmology, Rational Psy- 
chology, and Rational Theology. The first aims at a know- 
ledge of the real essence, as distinguished from the phenomena 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 363 

ONTOLOGY- 

of the material world; the second discusses the nature and 
origin, as distinguished from the faculties and affections, of the 
human soul and of other finite spirits ; the third aspires to 
comprehend God himself, as cognizable a priori in his essential 
nature, apart from the indirect and relative indications fur- 
nished by his works, as in Natural Theology, or by his Word. 
as in Revealed Religion. 

11 These three objects of metaphysical inquiry, God, the 
World, the Mind, correspond to Kant's three ideas of the Pure 
Reason ; and the object of his Critique is to show that in 
relation to all these, the attainment of a system of speculative 
philosophy is impossible. " — Mansel, Prolegom. Log., p. 277. 

u The science of ontology comprehends investigations of every 
real existence, either beyond the sphere of the present world, 
or in any other way incapable of being the direct object of 
consciousness, which can be deduced immediately from the 
possession of certain feelings or principles and faculties of the 
human soul." — Archer Butler, Lectures on Ancient Philosophy. 
OPERATIONS (of the Uliud).— " By the operations of the mind,'"* 
says Dr. Reid (Intell. Poiv., essay i., chap. 1), l « we understand 
every mode of thinking of which we are conscious. 

M It deserves our notice, that the various modes of thinking 
have always and in all language, as far as we know, been 
called by the name of operations of the mind, or by names of 
the same import. To body, we ascribe various properties, but 
not operations, properly so called : it is extended, divisible, 
moveable, inert ; it continues in any state in which it is put ; 
every change of its state is the effect of some force impressed 
upon it, and is exactly proportional to the force impressed, and 
in the precise direction of that force. These are the general 
properties of matter, and these are not operations ; on the con- 
trary, they all imply its being a dead, inactive thing, which 
moves only as it is moved, and acts only by being acted upon. 
But the mind is, from its very nature, a living and active 
being. Everything we know of it implies life and active 
energy ; and the reason why all its modes of thinking are 

♦ Operation, act, and energy, are nearly convertiMe terms; and are opposed to faculty, 
as the actual to the potential— Sir Will. Hamilton. 



364 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

OPERATIONS- 

called its operations, is that in all, or in most of them, it is not 
merely passive as body is, but is really and properly active." — 
V. States of Mind. 
OPINION (opinor, to think). — " The essential idea of opinion 
seems to be that it is a matter about which doubt can reason- 
ably exist, as to which two persons can without absurdity 
think differently. . . . . Any proposition, the contrary 
of which can be maintained with probability, is matter of 
opinion." — Sir G. C. Lewis, Essay on Opinion, p. i., iv. 

According to the last of these definitions, matter of opinion 
is opposed not to matter of fact, but to matter of certainty. 
Thus, the death of Charles I. is a fact — his authorship of Icon 
Basilike, an opinion. It is also used, however, to denote know- 
ledge acquired by inference, as opposed to that acquired by 
perception. Thus, that the moon gives light, is matter of 
fact ; that it is inhabited or uninhabited, is matter of opinion. 

It has been proposed (Edin. Rev., April, 1850, p. 311), to 
discard from philosophical use these ambiguous expressions, 
and to divide knowledge, according to its sources, into matter 
of perception and matter of inference ; and, as a cross division 
as to our conviction, into matter of certainty and matter of 
doubt 

Holding for true, or the subjective validity of a judgment 
in relation to conviction (which is, at the same time, objec- 
tively valid), has the three following degrees : — opinion, belief, 
and knowledge. Opinion is a consciously insufficient judg- 
ment, subjectively as well as objectively. Belief is subjectively 
sufficient, but is recognized as being objectively insufficient. 
Knowledge is both subjectively and objectively sufficient. Sub- 
jective sufficiency is termed conviction (for myself) ; objective 
sufficiency is termed certainty (for all). — Meiklejohn, Transl. 
of Crit. of Pure Reason, p. 498. — V. Belief, Knowledge, 
Certainty, Fact, Judgment. 
OPPOSED, OPPOSITION (to dvTiKtipzvov, that which lies over 
against). — Aristotle has said, that u one thing may be opposed 
to another in four ways ; by relation, by contrariety, or as 
privation is to possession, affirmation to negation. Thus, there 
is the opposition of relation between the double and the half; 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 365 

OPPOSED— 

of contrariety between good and evil ; blindness and seeing 
are opposed in the way of privation and possession ; the pro- 
positions, he sits, and he does not sit, in the way of negation 
and affirmation." — V. Contrary, Privation, Term. 
OPPOSITION (in liOgic). — u Two propositions are said to be 
opposed to each other, when, having the same subject and 
predicate, they differ in quantity, or quality, or both. It is 
evident, that with any given subject and predicate, you may 
state four distinct propositions, viz., A, E, I, and O ; any two 
of which are said to be opposed ; hence there are four different 
kinds of opposition, viz., 1st, the two universals (A and E), 
are called contraries to each other ; 2d, the two particular 
(I and O), subcontraries ; 3d, A and I, or E and O, subalterns; 
4th, A and O, or E and I, contradictories." — Whately, Log., 
b. ii., ch. 2, § 3. 

The opposition of propositions may be thus exhibited : — 

«,:..-, \ Contraries— may be both false, but cannot both be true. 

No A is B. j 

ome is . ) g utcontiai .j[ es _ ma y i) th be true, but cannot both be false. 
Some A is not B.) 

l . S . ~ \ Contradictories— one must be true and the other false. 
Some A is not B. > 

*f . ' \ Also Contradictories. 

Some A is B. j 

All A is B. > , ( No A is B. ) „ , . . . ., 

A . -r, r and So * • i. -o r Respectively subalternate. 

Some A is B. ) i Some A is not B. ) 

" Of two subalternate propositions the truth of the universal 
proves the truth of the particular, and the falsity of the 
particular proves the falsity of the universal, but not vice 
versa.'''' — Mill, Log., b. ii., ch. 1. 
OPTOllsm (optimum, the superlative of bonum, good), is the 
doctrine, that the universe, being the work of an infinitely 
perfect Being, is the best that could be created. 

This doctrine under various forms appeared in all the great 
philosophical schools of antiquity. During the Middle Ages 
it was advocated by St. Anselm and St. Thomas. In times 
comparatively modern, it was embraced by Descartes and 
Malebranche. But the doctrine has been developed in its 
highest form by Leibnitz. 



366 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

OPTIMISM— 

According to him, God, being infinitely perfect, could neither 
will nor produce evil. And as a less good compared with a 
greater is evil, the creation of God must not only be good, 
but the best that could possibly be. Before creation, all beings 
and all possible conditions of things were present to the Divine 
Mind in idea, and composed an infinite number of worlds, from 
among which infinite wisdom chose the best. Creation was 
the giving existence to the most perfect state of things which 
had been ideally contemplated by the Divine Mind. 

The optimism of Leibnitz has been misunderstood and misre- 
presented by Voltaire and others. But the doctrine which 
Leibnitz advocated is not that the present state of things is 
the best possible in reference to individuals, nor to classes of 
beings, nor even to this world as a whole, but in reference to 
all worlds, or to the universe as a whole — and not even to the 
universe in its present state, but in reference to that indefinite 
progress of which it may contain the germs. — Leibnitz, Essais 
de Theodicee ; Malebranche, Entretiens Metaphysiques. 

According to Mr. Stewart (Act. and Mor. Pow., b. iii., ch. 
3, sect. 1), under the title of optimists, are comprehended 
those who admit and those who deny the freedom of human 
actions, and the accountableness of man as a moral agent. 
ORDER means rank, series means succession ; hence there is in 
order something of voluntary arrangement, and in series some- 
thing of unconscious catenation. The order of a procession. 
The series of ages. A series of figures in uniform — soldiers in 
order of battle. — Taylor, Synonyms. 

Order is the intelligent arrangement of means to accomplish 
an end, the harmonious relation established between the parts 
for the good of the whole. The primitive belief that there is 
order in nature, is the ground of all experience. In this 
belief we confidently anticipate that the same causes, operating 
in the same circumstances, will produce the same effects. This 
may be resolved into a higher belief in the wisdom of an 
infinitely perfect being, who orders all things. 

Order has been regarded as the higher idea into which 
moral rectitude may be resolved. Every being has an end 
to answer, and every being attains its perfection in accom- 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 367 

OKDER- 

plishing that end. But while other beings tend blindly towards 
it, man knows the end of his being, and the place he holds 
in the scheme of the universe, and can freely and intel- 
ligently endeavour to realize that universal order of which 
he is an element or constituent. In doing so he does what 
is right. 

" There is one parent virtue, the universal virtue, the virtue 
which renders us just and perfect, the virtue which will one 
day render us happy. It is the only virtue. It is the love 
of the universal order as it eternally existed in the Divine 
Reason, where every created reason contemplates it. The 
love of order is the whole of virtue, and conformity to order 
constitutes the morality of actions." — Traite de Morale, Rott., 
1634. 

Such is the theory of Malebranche, and more recently of 
Joufiroy. In like manner, science, in all its discoveries, tends 
to the discovery of universal order. And art, in its highest 
attainments, is only realizing the truth of nature ; so that the 
true, the beautiful, and the good, ultimately resolve themselves 
into the idea of order. 
ORGAN. — An organ is a part of the body fitted to perform a par- 
ticular action, which, or rather the performance of which action, 
is denominated its function. 

" By the term organ" says Gall (vol. i., p. 228), u I mean 
the material condition which renders possible the manifestation 
of a faculty. The muscles and the bones are the material con- 
dition of movement, but are not the faculty which causes 
movement ; the whole organization of the eye is the material 
condition of sight, but it is not the faculty of seeing. By the 
term fc organ of the soul,' I mean a material condition which 
renders possible the manifestation of a moral quality, or an 
intellectual faculty. I say that man in this life thinks and wills 
by means of the brain ; but if one concludes that the brain is 
the thing that thinks and wills, it is as if one should say that 
the muscles are the faculty of moving ; that the organ of sight 
and the faculty of seeing are the same thing. In each case it 
would be to confound the faculty with the organ, and the 
organ with the faculty." 



368 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

ORGAN- 

" An organ of sense is an instrument composed of a peculiar 
arrangement of organized matter, by which it is adapted to 
receive from specific agents definite impressions. Between the 
agent that produces and the organ that receives the impressions, 
the adaptation is such, that the result of their mutual action 
is, in the first place, the production of sensation ; and, in the 
second place, of pleasure." — Dr. Southwood Smith. 

According to phrenological writers, particular parts of the 
brain are fitted to serve as instruments for particular faculties 
of the mind. This is organology. It is further maintained, 
that the figure and extent of these parts of the brain can be 
discerned externally. This is organoscopy. Some who believe 
in the former, do not believe in the latter. 
ORGANON or ORGANUM (ogyavov, an instrument), is the name 
often applied to a collection of Aristotle's treatises on logic ; 
because, by the Peripatetics, logic was regarded as the instru- 
ment of science rather than a science or part of science in 
itself. In the sixth century, Ammonius and Simplicius arranged 
the works of Aristotle in classes, one of which they called 
logical or organical. But it was not till the fifteenth century 
that the name Organum came into common use (Barthelemy 
St. Hilaire, De la Logique oVAristote, torn, i., p. 19). Bacon 
gave the name of Novum Organum to the second part of his 
Instauratio Magna. And the German philosopher, Lambert, 
in 1763, published a logical work under the title, Das Neue 
Organon. 

Poste, in his translation of the Posterior Analytics, gives a 
sketch of the Organum of Aristotle, which he divides into four 
parts, — viz., General Logic, the Logic of Deduction, the Logic 
of Induction, and the Logic of Opinion ; the third, indeed, not 
sufficiently articulated and disengaged from the fourth, and 
hence the necessity of a Novum Organum. 

" The Organon of Aristotle, and the Organon of Bacon 
stand in relation, but the relation of contrariety ; the one con- 
siders the laws under which the subject thinks, the other the 
laws under which the object is to be known. To compare 
them together, is therefore to compare together qualities of 
different species. Each proposes a different end; both, in 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 3G9 

ORCJANON— 

different ways are useful ; and both ought to be assiduously 
studied." — Sir Will. Hamilton, Rei(Ts Works, p. 712, note. 

ORIG-IN (prigo) may be taken in two senses, essentially different 
from each other. It may mean the cause of anything being 
produced, or it may imply simply the occasion of its produc- 
tion. — Morell, Specul. Phil, vol. i., p. 99. 

ORIGINATE, ORIGINATION". — These words and their con- 
jugates are coming to be used in the question concerning 
liberty and necessity. Does man originate his own actions ? 
Is man a principle of origination ? are forms of expression 
equivalent to the question, Is man a free agent ? 

" To deny all originating power of the will, must be to place 
the primordial and necessary causes of all things in the Divine 

nature Whether as a matter of fact an originating 

power reside in man, may be matter of inquiry; but to main- 
tain it to be an impossibility, is to deny the possibility of crea- 
tion." — Thomson, Christ. Theism, book i., chap. 6. "Will, 
they hold to be a free cause, a cause which is not an effect ; in 
other words, they attribute to it a power of absolute origin- 
ation." — SirW. Hamilton, Discussions, p. 595. See also Cairns, 
On Moral Freedom. 

OSTENSIVE (pstendo, to show). — " An ostensive conception 
indicates how an object is constituted. It is opposed to the 
heuristic (heuretic) conception which indicates how, under its 
guidance, the quality and connection of objects of experience 
in general are to be sought. The conception of a man, a 
house, &c, is an ostensive one ; the conception of the supreme 
intelligence (for theoretic reason) is an heuristic conception.' 1 
— Haywood, Explanation of Terms in the Crit. of Pure Reason. 

OUOHTNESS.—- 7. DUTY. 

OUTNESS. — " The word outness, which has been of late revived 
by some of Kant's admirers in this country, was long ago used 
by Berkeley in his Principles of Human Knowledge (sect. 43) : 
and at a still earlier period of his life, in his Essay towards a 
New Theory of Vision (sect. 46). I mention this as I have 
more than once heard the term spoken of as a fortunate 
innovation." — Stewart, Philosoph. Essays, part i., essay 2. — 
V. Externality. 

2b 



370 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

PACT. — V. Contract, Promise. 

PANTHEISM (nag, all; hog, God). — "It supposes God and 
nature, or God and the whole universe, to be one and the 
same substance — one universal being ; insomuch that men's 
souls are only modifications of the Divine substance." — Water- 
land, Works, vol. viii., p. 81. 

PantJieistce qui contendunt unlearn esse substantiam, cvjus partes 
sunt omnia entia quce existunt, — Lacoudre, Inst. Philosophy torn, 
ii., p. 120. 

Pantheism, when explained to mean the absorption of God 
in nature, is atheism ; and the doctrine of Spinoza has been so 
regarded by many. When explained to mean the absorption 
of nature in God — of the finite in the infinite — it amounts to 
an exaggeration of theism. But pantheism, strictly speaking, 
is the doctrine of the necessary and eternal co- existence of the 
finite and the infinite — of the absolute consubstantiality of God 
and nature— considered as two different but inseparable aspects 
of universal existence ; and the confutation of it is to be found 
in the consciousness which every one has of his personality and 
responsibility, which pantheism destroys. 

PARABLE (vapufioki, from noLPuPaKha, to put or set beside), 
has been defined to be a " fictitious but probable narrative 
taken from the affairs of ordinary life to illustrate some 
higher and less known truth." " It differs from the Fable, 
moving, as it does, in a spiritual ' world, and never trans- 
gressing the actual order of things natural ; from the Myth, 
there being in the latter an unconscious blending of the 
deeper meaning with the outward symbol, the two remaining 
separate, and separable in the Parable ; from the Proverb, 
inasmuch as it is longer carried out, and not merely acci- 
dentally and occasionally, but necessarily figurative ; from the 
Allegory, comparing, as it does, one thing with another, at the 
same time preserving them apart as an inner and an outer, 
not transferring, as does the Allegory, the properties, and 
qualities and relations of one to the other." — Trench, On the 
Parables. 
PARADOX Qttupoc t6%a, beyond, or contrary to appearance), is a 
proposition which seems not to be true, but which turns out to 
be true. Cicero wrote " Paradoxal and the Hon. Eobert 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 371 

PARADOX— 

Boyle published, in 1666, Hydrostatical Paradoxes, made out 
by new experiments. 

PABALOOISM (TrxQccKoyurpo?, from TruguKoyi^opcti, to reason 
wrong), is a formal fallacy or pseudo-syllogism, in which the 
conclusion does not follow from the premises. We may be 
deceived ourselves by a paralogism; when we endeavour to 
deceive others by it, it is a sopliism — q. v. 
Paralogism of Pure Reason. — " The logical paralogism consists 
in the erroneousness of a syllogism, according to form, whatever 
besides its content may be. But a transcendental paralogism 
has a transcendental foundation of concluding falsely, according 
to the form. In such a way, a like false conclusion will have 
its foundation in the nature of human reason, and will carry 
along with itself an inevitable, although not an insoluble illu- 
sion." — Kant, Crit. of Pure Reason, p. 299. 

PARClMON¥ (Law of ) (parcimonia, sparingness). — " That sub- 
stances are not to be multiplied without necessity ; " in other 
words, u that a plurality of principles are not to be assumed, 
when the phenomena can possibly be explained by one." This 
regulative principle may be called the law or maxim of parci- 
mony. — Sir Will. Hamilton, Reid's Works, p. 751, note A. 

Entia non sunt midtplicanda prceter necessitatem. Frustra 
Jit per plura quod fieri potest per pauciora. These are expres- 
sions of this principle. 

pabonymou§.-F. Conjugate. 

PART (y*spog, pars, part, or portion). — u Part, in one sense, is 
applied to anything divisible in quantity. For that which you 
take from a quantity, hi so far as it is quantity, is a part of that 
quantity. Thus two is a part of three. In another sense, you 
only give the name of part to what is an exact measure of 
quantity ; so that, in one point of view, two will be a part of 
three, in another not. That into which you can divide a genus, 
animal, for example, otherwise than by quantity, is still apart 
of the genus, In this sense species are parts of the genus. 
Part is also applied to that into which an object can be divided. 
whether matter or form. Iron is part of a globe, or cube of 
iron ; it is the matter which receives the form. An angle is 
also a part. Lastly, the elements of the deiinition of every 



372 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY, 

PART— 

particular being are parts of the whole ; so that, in this point 
of view, the genus may be considered as part of the species ; 
in another, on the contrary, the species is part of the genus. 71 — 
Aristotle, Metaphys., lib. iv., cap. 25. 

" Of things which exist by parts, there are three kinds. The 
first is of things, the parts of which are not co-existent, but 
successive ; such as time or motion, no two parts of which can 
exist together. 

u The next kind of things consisting of parts, is such where 
parts are co-existent and contiguous. Things of this kind are 
said to be extended; for extension is nothing else but co-existence 
and junction of parts. 

"The third kind of things existing by parts is, when the 
parts are co-existent, yet not contiguous or joined, but separate 
and disjoined. Of this kind is number, the parts of which are 
separated by nature, and only united by the operation of the 
mind." — Monboddo, Ancient Metapltys., book ii., chap. 13. 
PASSION (passio, ttolgxu, to suffer), is the contrary of action. 
tc A passive state is the state of a thing while it is operated 
upon by some cause. Everything and every being but God, 
is liable to be in this state. He is pure energy — always active, 
but never acted upon ; while everything else is liable to suffer 
change." — See Harris, Dialogue concerning Happiness, p. 86, 
note. 
PASSIONS (The). — This phrase is sometimes employed in a wide 
sense to denote all the states or manifestations of the sensibility 
— every form and degree of feeling. In a more restricted 
psychological sense, it is confined to those states of the sensi- 
bility which are turbulent, and weaken our power of self-com- 
mand. This is also the popular use of the phrase, in which 
passion is opposed to reason. 

Plato arranged the passions in two classes, — the concupiscible 
and irascible, S7ri6vfti* and 6u/uog, the former springing from 
the body and perishing with it, the latter connected with the 
rational and immortal part of our nature, and stimulating to 
the pursuit of good and the avoiding of excess and evil. 

Aristotle included all our active principles under one general 
designation of orectic, and distinguished them into the appetite 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 373 

PASSIONS— 

irascible, the appetite concupiscible, which had their origin in 
the body, and the appetite rational (j3ofar,<Hg), which is the 
will, under the guidance of reason. 

Descartes and Malebranche have each given a theory and 
classification of the passions ; also, Dr. Isaac Watts, Dr. Cogan, 
and Dr. Hutcheson. 
PERCEPTION {capiOy to take ; per, by means of) : apprehen- 
sion by means of the organs of sense. 

Descartes (Princip. Philosophy pars 1, sect. 32) says, " Omnes 
modi cogitandi, quos in nobis experimur, ad duos generates 
referri possunt : quorum unus est perceptio, sive operatio intel- 
lects ; alius vero, volitio, sive operatio voluntatis. Nam sentire. 
imaginari, et pure inteUigere, sunt tantum diversi modi perci- 
piendi ; ut et cupere, aversari, affirmare, negare, dubitare, sunt 
diversi modi volendi." 

Locke {Essay on Hum. Understand., book ii., chap. 6) says, 
4i The two principal actions of the mind are these two ; per- 
ception or thinking, and volition or willing. The power of 
thinking is called the understanding, and the power of volition 
the will; and these two powers or abilities of the mind are 
called faculties.'' 

Dr. Reid thought that "perception is most properly applied 
to the evidence which we have of external objects by our 
senses." He says (Intell. Pow., essay i., chap. 1), " The 
perception of external objects by our senses, is an operation 
of the mind of a peculiar nature, and ought to have a name 
appropriated to it. It has so in all languages. And, in 
English, I know no word more proper to express this act of the 
mind than perception. Seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and 
touching or feeling, are words that express the operations 
proper to each sense; perceiving expresses that which is common 
to them all." 

The restriction thus imposed upon the word by Reid, is to be 
found in the philosophy of Kant ; and, as convenient, has been 
generally acquiesced in. 

In note d* to Reid's Works, p. 876, Sir Will. Hamilton 
notices the following meanings of perception, as applied to dif- 
ferent faculties, acts, and objects : — 



374 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

PERCEPTION— 

1. Perception in its primary philosophical signification, as in 
the mouths of Cicero and Quintilian, is vaguely equivalent to 
comprehension, notion, cognition in general. 

2. An apprehension, a becoming aware of, consciousness. 
Perception, the Cartesians really identified with idea, and 
allowed them only a logical distinction ; the same representa- 
tive act being called idea, inasmuch as we regard it as a repre- 
sentation ; and perception, inasmuch as we regard it as a 
consciousness of such representation. 

3. Perception is limited to the apprehension of sense alone. 
This limitation was first formally imposed by Reid, and there- 
after by Kant. 

4. A still more restricted meaning, through the authority of 
Reid, is perception (proper), in contrast to sensation (proper). 

He defines sensitive perception, or perception simply as that 
act of consciousness whereby we apprehend in our body, 

a. Certain special affections, whereof, as an animated organism , 
it is contingently susceptible ; and 

b. Those general relations of extension, under which, as a 
material organism, it necessarily exists. 

Of these perceptions, the former, which is thus conversant 
about a subject- object, is [sensation proper; the latter, which is 
thus conversant about an object- object, is perception proper. 
PERCEPTIONS (Obscure), or latent modifications of mind. 

Every moment the light reflected from innumerable objects, 
smells and sounds of every kind, and contact of different- 
bodies are affecting us. But we pay no heed to them. These 
are what Leibnitz (Avant Propos de ses Nouv. Essais) calls 
obscure perceptions — and what Thurot (De V Entendement, &c, 
torn, i., p. 11) proposes to call impressions. But this word is 
already appropriated to the changes produced by communica- 
tion between an external object and a bodily organ. 

The sum of these obscure perceptions and latent feelings, 
which never come clearly into the field of consciousness, is 
what makes us at any time well or ill at ease. And as the 
amount in general is agreeable it forms the charm which 
attaches us to life — even when our more defined perceptions 
and feelings are painful* 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 375 

PERCEPTIONS— 

The following account of Leibnitz's philosophy as to (obscure) 
perceptions is translated from Tiberghien, Essai des Connaiss. 
Hum., p. 566 : — 

" Confused or insensible perceptions are without consciousness 
or memory. It is difficult enough to seize them in themselves, 
but they must be, because the mind always thinks. A sub- 
stance cannot be without action, a body without movement, a 
mind without thought. There are a thousand marks which 
make us judge that there is, every moment, in us an infinity of 
perceptions ; but the habit in which we are of perceiving them, 
by depriving them of the attraction of novelty, turns away our 
attention and prevents them from fixing themselves in our 
memory. How could we form a clear perception without the 
insensible perceptions which constitute it ? To hear the noise 
of the sea, for example, it is necessary that we hear the parts 
which compose the whole, that is, the noise of each wave, though 
each of these little noises does not make itself known but in the 
confused assemblage of all the others together with it. A 
hundred thousand nothings cannot make anything. And sleep, 
on the other hand, is never so sound that we have not some 
feeble and confused feeling ; one would not be wakened by the 
greatest noise in the world, if one had not some perception of 
its commencement, which is small. 

"It is important to remark how Leibnitz attaches the 
greatest questions of philosophy to these insensible perceptions, 
insofar as they imply the law of continuity . It is by means 
of these we can say that the present c is full of the past and big 
with the future,' and that in the least of substances may be 
read the whole consequences of the things of the universe. 
They often determine us without our knowing it, and they 
deceive the vulgar by the appearance of an indifference of 
equilibrium. They supply the action of substances upon one 
another, and explain the pre-established harmony of soul and 
body. It is in virtue of these insensible variations that no two 
things can ever be perfectly alike (the principle of indiscwn- 
ibles), and that their difference is always more than numerical, 
which destroys the doctrine of the tablets of the mind being 
empty, of a soul without thought, a substance without action, 



376 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

PERCEPTIONS— 

a vacuum in space, and the atoms of matter. There is another 
consequence— that souls, being simple substances, are always 
united to a body, and that there is no soul entirely separated 
from one. This dogma resolves all the difficulties as to the 
immortality of souls, the difference of their states being never 
anything but that of more or less perfect, which renders their 
state past or future as explicable as their present. It also 
supplies the means of recovering memory, by the periodic 
developments which may one day arrive." 

" Obscure ideas, or more properly, sensations with dormant 
consciousness, are numerous. It is through them, so far as 
they proceed from the nervous system of vegetative life, and 
thus accompany all its functions, digestion, secretion, &c, 
that the soul, according to Stahl, secretly governs the body. 
4 Animus est instar oceanif says Leibnitz, ' in quo infinita 
multitudo perceptionum obscurissimarum adest, et distinctw 
idece instar insularum sunt, quce ex oceano emergunt. 1 It is 
they which are active throughout the whole progress of the for- 
mation of thought ; for this goes on, though we are unconscious 
of it, and gives us only the perfect results, viz., ideas and 
notions. It is they which in the habitual voluntary motions, 
for instance, in playing on the piano, dancing, &c, set the 
proper muscles in motion through the appropriate motor 
nerves, though the mind does not direct to them the attention 
of consciousness. It is they which in sleep and in disorders of 
mind act a most important part. It is their totality which 
forms what plays so prominent a part in life under the name 
of disposition or temper ." — Feuchtersleben, Med, Psychology, 
1847, p. 169. 

Lord Jeffrey had a fancy, or said he had it, that though 
he went to bed with his head stuffed and confused with the 
names and dates and other details, of various causes, they were 
all in order in the morning ; which he accounted for by saying, 
that during sleep il they all crystallized round their proper 
centres" — Cockburn, Life of Jeffrey, vol. i., p. 243, note. 
PERFECT, PERFECTION (perficio ; perfectum, made out, 
complete). — To be perfect is to want nothing. Perfection is 
relative or absolute. A being possessed of all the qualities 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 377 

PERFECT — 

belonging to its species in the highest degree may be called 
perfect in a relative sense. But absolute perfection can only be 
ascribed to the Supreme Being. We have the idea of a Being 
infinitely perfect — and from this Descartes reasoned that such 
a being really exists. 

The perfections of God are those qualities which he has 
communicated to his rational creatures, and which are in Him 
in an infinitely perfect degree. They have been distinguished 
as natural and moral — the former belonging to Deity as the 
great first cause — such as independent and necessary existence 
— the latter as manifested in the creation and government of 
the universe — such as goodness, justice, &c. But they are all 
natural in the sense of being essential. It has been proposed 
to call the former attributes, and the latter perfections. But 
this distinctive use of the terms has not prevailed ; indeed it 
is not well founded. In God there are nothing but attributes 
— because in Him everything is absolute and involved in the 
substance and unity of a perfect being. 
PERFECTIBILITY (The Doctrine of) is, that men, as indi- 
viduals, and as communities, have not attained to that happi- 
ness and development of which their nature and condition are 
capable, but that they are in a continual progress to a state of 
perfection, even in this life. That men as a race are capable 
of progress and improvement is a fact attested by experience 
and history. But that this improvement may be carried into 
their whole nature — and to an indefinite extent — that all the 
evils which affect the body or the mind may be removed — cannot 
be maintained. Bacon had faith in the intellectual progress of 
men when he entitled his work " Of the Advancement of Learn- 
ing." Pascal has articulately expressed this faith in a preface to 
his u Treatise of a Vacuum. " u Not only individual men advance 
from day to day in knowledge, but men as a race make con- 
tinual progress in proportion as the world grows older, because 
the same thing happens in a succession of men as in the different 
periods of the life of an individual ; so that the succession of 
men during a course of so many ages, ought to be considered 
as the same man always living and always learning. From 
this may be seen the injustice of the reverence paid to antiquity 



378 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

I»ERFECTIBI3L,1TY-- 

in philosophy : for as old age is the period of life most distant 
from infancy, who does not see that the old age of the universal 
man is not to be sought for in the period nearest his birth, but 
in that most remote from it." Malebranche (Search after 
Truth, book ii., part ii., chap. 4) expressed a similar opinion ; 
and the saying of a great modern reformer is well known, " If 
you talk of the wisdom of the ancients, we are the ancients." 
It cannot be denied that in arts and sciences, and the accom- 
modations of social life, and the extension of social freedom, 
the administration of justice, the abolition of slavery, and 
many other respects, men have improved, and are improving, 
and may long continue to improve. But human nature has 
limits beyond which it cannot be carried. Its life here cannot 
be indefinitely prolonged, its liability to pain cannot be removed, 
its reason cannot be made superior to error, and all the arrange- 
ments for its happiness are liable to go wrong. 

Leibnitz, in accordance with his doctrine that the universe is 
composed of monads essentially active, thought it possible that 
the human race might reach a perfection of which we cannot 
well conceive. Charles Bonnet advocated the doctrine of a 
paling enesia, or transformation of all things into a better state. 
In the last century the great advocates of social progress 
are Fontenelle, Turgot, and Condorcet, in France ; Lessing, 
Kant, and Schiller, in Germany ; Price and Priestley, in Eng- 
land. Owen's views are also well known. — Mercier, De la 
Perfectibilite Humaine, 8vo, Paris, 1842. 

1>:e ISO* ATE TIC (irsQtirotTYiTixog, ambulator, from ireQiv&r'sa, to 
walk about), is applied to Aristotle and his followers, who 
seem to have carried on their philosophical discussions while 
walking about in the halls or promenades of the Lyceum. 

JPEIiSON, PERSOMlilTY. — Persona, in Latin, meant the mask 
worn by an actor on the stage, within which the sounds of the 
voice were concentrated, and through which (personuit) he 
made himself heard by the immense audience. From being 
applied to the mask it came next to be applied to the actor, 
then to the character acted, then to any assumed character, 
and lastly, to any one having any character or station. Mar- 
tinius gives as its composition — per se una, an individual. 






VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 379 

PERSON— 

a Person," says Locke (Essay on Hum. Understand., book ii., 
chap. 27), " stands for a thinking intelligent being, that has 
reason and reflection, and can consider itself as itself, the same 
thinking thing in different times and places ; which it does 
only by that consciousness which is inseparable from thinking, 
and as it seems to me essential to it : it being impossible for 
any one to perceive without perceiving that he does perceive. 1 ' 
" We attribute personality" says Mons. Ahrens (Cours de 
Psychologies torn, ii., p. 272), " to every being which exists, 
not solely for others, but which is in the relation of unity with 
itself in existing, or for itself. Thus we refuse personality to 
a mineral or a stone, because these things exist for others, but 
not for themselves. An animal, on the contrary, which exists 
for itself, and stands in relation to itself, possesses a degree of 
personality. But man exists for himself in all his essence, in 
a manner more intimate and more extensive ; that which he is, 
he is for himself, he has consciousness of it. But God alone 
exists for himself in a manner infinite and absolute. God is 
entirely in relation to himself; for there are no beings out of 
him to whom he could have relation. His whole essence is 
for himself, and this relation is altogether internal : and it is 
this intimate and entire relation of God to himself in all his 
essence, which constitutes the divine personality." 

u The seat of intellect," says Paley, " is a person." 

A being intelligent and free, every spiritual and moral 
agent, every cause which is in possession of responsibility and 
consciousness, is a person. In this sense, God considered as a 
creating cause, distinct from the universe, is a person. 

According to Boethius, Persona est rationalis naturm indi- 
vidua substantia. 

" Whatever derives its powers of motion from without, from 
some other being, is a tiling. Whatever possesses a spontane- 
ous action within itself, is a person, or, as Aristotle (Nicom. 
Eth., lib. in.) defines it, an ccpxv it^c&^iuq." — Sewell, Christ. 
Mor., p. 152. 

u Personality is individuality existing in itself, but with a na- 
ture as its ground." — Coleridge, Notes on Eng. Div.,xo\. i., p. 43. 

"If the substance be unintelligent in which the quality 



380 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

PERSON- 

exists, we call it a thing or substance, but if it be intelligent, 
we call it a person, meaning by the word person to distin- 
guish a thing or substance that is intelligent, from a thing or 
substance that is not intelligent. By the word person, we 
therefore mean a thing or substance that is intelligent, or a 
conscious being ; including in the word the idea both of the 
substance and its properties together." — Henry Taylor, Apo- 
logy of Ben Mordecai, letter i., p. 85. 

" A subsisting substance or supposition endued with reason 
as man is, that is, capable of religion, is a person. "— Oldfield, 
Essay on Reason, p. 319. 

u Person, as applied to Deity, expresses the definite and 
certain truth that God is a living being, and not a dead 
material energy. Whether spoken of the Creator or the 
creature, the word may signify either the unknown but abid- 
ing substance of the attributes by which he is known to us ; 
or the unity of these attributes considered in themselves." — 
B,. A. Thompson, Christian Theism, book ii., chap. 7. — V. 
Identity (Personal), Reason, Subsistentia. 

Personality, in jurisprudence, denotes the capacity of rights 
and obligations which belong to an intelligent will. — Jouflroy, 
Droit Nat, p. 19. 
PETITIO PRINCIPII (or petitio qucesiti, begging the question). 

— V. Fallacy. 
phantasm. — V. Idea, Perception. 

PHENOMENOLOGY.— V. NATURE. 

PHENOMENON (jpuivopsvov, from (paivopcu, to appear), is that 
which has appeared. It is generally applied to some sensible _ 
appearance, some occurrence in the course of nature. But in 
mental philosophy it is applied to the various and changing 
states of mind. " How pitiful and ridiculous are the grounds 
upon which such men pretend to account for the very lowest 
and commonest phenomena of nature, without recurring to a 
God and Providence !" — South, vol. iv., Serm. ix. 

u Among the various phenomena which the human mind 
presents to our view, there is none more calculated to ex- 
cite our curiosity and our wonder, than the communication 
which is carried on between the sentient, thinking, and active 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 381 

PHENOMENON— 

principle within us, and the material objects with which we 
are surrounded." — Stewart, Elements, c. 1, sect. 1. 

In the philosophy of Kant, phenomenon means an object 
such as we represent it to ourselves or conceive of it, in oppo- 
sition to noumenon, or a thing as it is in itself. 

" According to Kant, the facts of consciousness, in their 
subjective character, are produced partly from the nature of 
the things of which it is conscious ; and hence, in their objec- 
tive character, they are phenomena, or objects as they appear 
in relation to us, not things in themselves, noumena, or reali- 
ties in their absolute nature, as they may be out of relation 
to the mind. The subjective elements which the mind itself 
contributes to the consciousness of every object are to be 
found, as regards intuition, in the forms of space and time ; 
and as regards thought, in the categories, unity, plurality, and 
the rest.* To perceive a thing in itself would be to perceive it 
neither in space nor in time ; for these are furnished by the 
constitution of our perceptive faculties, and constitute an 
element of the phenomenal object of intuition only. To 
think of a thing in itself would be to think of it neither 
as one nor as many, nor under any other category ; for these, 
again, depend upon the constitution of our understand- 
ing, and constitute an element of the phenomenal object of 
thought. The phenomenal is the product of the inherent 
laws of our own mental constitution, and, as such, is the sum 
and limit of all the knowledge to which we can attain." — 
Mansel, Lect. on Phil, of Kant, pp. 21, 22. 

The definition of phenomenon is, '* that which can be known 

only along with something else." — Ferrier, Inst of Metaphys.. 

p. 319. — V. Noumenon. 

PHILANTHROPY (Qfactv()oa7riu, from Qfactufyavsva, to be a 

friend to mankind). — " They thought themselves not much 

* I. Categories of Quantity. II. Categories of Quality. 

Unity. Reality. 

Plurality. Negation. 

Totality Limitation. 

III. Categories of Relation. IV. Categories of Modality. 

Inherence and Subsistence. Possibility, or Impossibility. 

Casuality and Dependence. Existence, or Xon-Existenee. 

Community, or Reciprocal Action. Necessity or Contingenee. 



382 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

PHILANTHROPY- 

concerned to acquire that God-like excellency, a philanthropy 
and love to all mankind." — Bp. Taylor, vol. iii., Serm. i. 

This state or affection of mind does not differ essentially 
from charity or brotherly love. Both spring from benevolence 
or a desire for the well-being of others. When our benevo- 
lence is purified and directed by the doctrines and precepts of 
religion, it becomes charity or brotherly love. When sus- 
tained by large and sound views of human nature and the 
human condition, it seeks to mitigate social evils and increase 
and multiply social comforts, it takes the name of philanthropy . 
But there is no incompatibility between the two. It is only 
when philanthropy proceeds on false views of human nature 
and wrong views of human happiness, that it can be at vari- 
ance with true charity or brotherly love. 

Philanthropy, or a vague desire and speculation as to improv- 
ing the condition of the whole human race, is sometimes 
opposed to nationality or patriotism. But true charity or 
benevolence, while it begins with loving and benefiting those 
nearest to us by various relations, will expand according to 
the means and opportunities afforded of doing good. And 
while we are duly attentive to the stronger claims of intimate 
connection, as the waves on the bosom of the waters spread 
wider and wider, so we are to extend our regards beyond the 
distinctions of friendship, of family, and of society, and grasp 
in one benevolent embrace the universe of human beings. 
God hath made of one blood all nations of men that dwell 
upon the face of the earth; and although the sympathies 
of friendship and the charities of patriotism demand a more 
early and warm acknowledgment, we are never to forget those 
great and general relations which bind together the kindreds 
of mankind — who are all children of one common parent, heirs 
of the same frail nature, and sharers in the same unbounded 
goodness : — 

" Friends, parents, neighbours, first it will embrace, 
Our country next, and next all human race. 
Wide and more wide, the o'erflowing of the mind, 
Takes every creature in of every kind. 
Earth smiles around, in boundless beauty dressed, 
And heaven reflects its image in her breast."— Pope. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 6Q6 

PHILOSOPHY ((ptMaotpU, (pfaioc, goQix, the love of wisdom). — 
The origin of the word is traced back to Pythagoras, who did 
not call himself ao<p6s, like the wise men of Greece, but merely 
declared himself to be a lover of wisdom, Qfaos ao(picc;. Philo- 
sophy is not so much the love of wisdom, as the love of wisdom 
may be said to be its spring. The desire of knowledge is 
natural to man. Ignorance is painful ; knowledge is agree- 
able. Surrounded with ever changing phenomena, he seeks 
to know their causes, and tries to bring their multiplicity to 
something like unity, and to reduce their variety to law and 
rule. When so employed he is prosecuting philosophy. It 
was defined by Cicero (Be Officiis, lib. ii., c. 2), Rerum divin- 
arum et humanarum* causarumque quibus hce res continentur, 
scientia. But what man can attain or aspire to such know- 
ledge, or even to the knowledge of one of the several depart- 
ments into which philosophy may be divided? t( ; In philosophy " 
says Lord Bacon (Of the Advancement of Learning, book ii.), 
u the contemplations of man do either penetrate unto God, or 
are circumferred to nature, or are reflected or reverted upon 
himself. Out of which several inquiries there do arise three 
knowledges, Divine philosophy, natural philosophy, and human 
philosophy, or humanity." Now the object-matter of philo- 
sophy may be distinguished as God, or nature, or man. But, 
underlying all our inquiries into any of these departments, 
there is a first philosophy, which seeks to ascertain the grounds 
or principles of knowledge, and the causes of all things. Hence 
philosophy has been defined to be the science of causes and 
principles. It is the investigation of those principles on which 
all knowledge and all being ultimately rest. It is the exercise 
of reason to solve the most elevated problems which the human 
mind -can conceive. How do we know ? and what do we know ? 
It examines the grounds of human certitude, and verifies the 
trustworthiness of human knowledge. It inquires into the 
causes of all beings, and ascertains the nature of all existences 
by reducing them to unity. It is not peculiar to any depart- 
ment, but common to all departments of knowledge. Or if 

* According to Lord Monboddo (Ancient Metaphys., book i., chap. 5), the Romans had 
only the word sapientia for philosophy, till about the time of Cicero, -when they adopted 
the Greek word phihsophia. 



384 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY, 

PHILOSOPHY— 

each department of knowledge may be said to have its philo- 
sophy, it is because it rests upon that knowledge of principles 
and causes which is common to them all. Man first examines 
phenomena, but he is not satisfied till he has reduced them to 
their causes, and when he has done so he asks to determine 
the value of the knowledge to which he has attained. This is 
philosophy properly so called, — the mother and governing 
science — the science of sciences. 

" c Philosophy is the science of first principles,' that, namely, 
which investigates the primary grounds, and determines the 
fundamental certainty, of human knowledge generally." — 
Morell, Philosoph. Tendencies of the Age, 8vo, Lond., 1848, 
p. 13. 

Peemans, Introd. ad Philosoph., 12mo, Lovan., 1840, 
sect. 107, proposes the following definition : — u Philosophia 
est scientia rerum per causas primas, recto rationis usu corn- 
par ata" 

By this definition it is distinguished from other kinds of 
knowledge. 1. From simple intelligence, which is intuitive, while 
philosophical knowledge is discursive. 2. From natural sciences, 
which do not always reach to first causes. 3. From arts, which 
do not proceed by causes or principles, but by rule. 4. From 
faith or belief, which rests not on evidence but authority. 5. 
From opinion, which is not certain knowledge. And from the 
common love of knowledge and truth, which does not prosecute 
and acquire it scientifically. 

u Philosophy is the attainment of truth by the way of reason." 
— Ferrier, List, of Metaphys., p. 2. 
PHRENOLOGY (jP^v, mind; Koyog, discourse). — This word 
ought to mean Psychology, or mental philosophy, but has been 
appropriated by Craniologists, on account of the light which 
their observations of the convolutions of the brain and corre- 
sponding elevations of the skull are supposed to throw on the 
nature and province of our different faculties. According to 
Dr. Gall, the founder of Craniology, " its end is to determine 
the functions of the brain in general, and of its different parts 
in particular, and to prove that you may recognize different 
dispositions and inclinations by the protuberances and depres- 



TO'. BUOSC 

PHBEXOLOGY- 

sons to be found on the cranium. The cranium being e 

moulded upon the mass of the brain, every portion of : _ 

face will prese:: _ 

corresponding portion of the brain. But individuals in 

such or such a portion c: 

been observed by pin :eh or 

such a faculty, talen 

that the portion of the cranium odsng to thai 

:"_t".i: :: :"i .- ;-;/ :J im is 

— its special organ J" — £ G .ill, Span i 

u ff it be true thai :i: : - mufti ~ 

always in the same specific :". - * : i : \:.i.i . m in the same t 
nation of specific fasciculi. : same 

in '.-: ^Z; ::v::r55 ::" :;.::: ::z;.rl:"-i. :;::.- " \ ::'. : is sc ::.v 
true; and icnlihas the .:.:: 

gatin. tfa to produce pressure on the corresp: 

internal surface of the cranium, and if the I make a 

correspon ice to the elongation o: 

bo; r th : i 
many arbi:: ry n arriving at such a result, that 

a va ; rr mass of most be brought- forward 

before phrenologists and cram have a right to claim 

-True.;. ;.-_m: :o T-ieir Ijctrine." — Wis;;.::. D :.;:.'.*-, :"'-•- • 
p. 1 

TheBri: 
to admit phrenology as a 
PHYSiOG.yo.nv :~:.; , . . .:^. an index) > 

ring .".: 
from his exteri : mmon language it signifies the judg- 

ing a by the features ai 

In the Middle Ages, physiognomy meant the knowk _ 
internal properties 1 existence from c 

appearances. 

Of the planets, an men's destinies."— ffud&ras. 
MB not appear that anion _ ~ 

it beyond animated :. 
_ 



386 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

PHY8IOGNOMY- 

The treatise on this subject ascribed to Aristotle is thought to 
be spurious. But all men, in the ordinary business of life- 
seem to be influenced by the belief that the disposition and 
character may in some measure be indicated by the form of the 
body, and especially by the features of the face. 

" Every one is in some degree a master of that art which is 
generally distinguished by the name of Physiognomy, and 
naturally forms to himself the character or fortune of a stranger 
from the features and lineaments of his face. We are no 
sooner presented to any one we never saw before, but we are 
immediately struck with the idea of a proud, a reserved, an 
affable, or a good-natured man ; and upon our first going into 
a company of strangers, our benevolence or aversion, awe or 
contempt, rises naturally towards several particular persons 
before we have heard them speak a single word, or so much as 
know who they are. For my own part, I am so apt to frame 
a notion of every man's humour or circumstances by his looks, 
that I have sometimes employed myself from Charing Cross to 
the Royal Exchange in drawing the characters of those who 
have passed by me. When I see a man with a sour, rivelled 
face, I cannot forbear pitying his wife ; and when I meet with 
an open, ingenuous countenance, I think of the happiness of 
his friends, his family, and his relations. I cannot recollect 
the author of a famous saying to a stranger who stood silent 
in his company, — c Speak that I may see thee.' But with 
submission I think we may be better known by our looks 
than by our words, and that a man's speech is much more 
easily disguised than his countenance." — Addison, Spectator, 
No. 86. 

Young children are physiognomists — and they very early 
take likings and dislikings founded on the judgments which they 
intuitively form of the aspects of those around them. The 
inferior animals, even, especially such of them as have been 
domesticated, are affected by the natural or assumed expres- 
sion of the human countenance. As to their taking likings or 
dislikings to particular persons, this is probably to be ascribed 
to the great acuteness not of the sense of sight, but of scent. 

The taking a prejudice against a person for his looks is 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 387 

PHYSIOONOUIY— 

reckoned among the smaller vices in morality, and is called 
by More in his Enchiridion Ethicum, Prosopolepsia. 

See Lavater, Spurzheim. J. Cross, Attempt to Establish 
Physiognomy upon Scientific Principles, Glasg., 1817. 
PHYSIOLOGY and PHYSICS were formerly used as synony- 
mous. The former now denotes the laws of organized bodies, 
the latter of unorganized. The former is distinguished into 
animal and vegetable. Both imply the necessity of nature as 
opposed to liberty of intelligence, and neither can be appro- 
priately applied to mind. Dr. Brown, however, entitled the 
first part of one of his works, the Physiology of mind. — V. 
Psychology. 

Physiology determines the matter and the form of living 
beings. It describes their structure and operations, and then 
ascends from phenomena to laws ; from the knowledge of 
organs and their actions it concludes their function and their 
end or purpose ; and from among the various manifestations it 
seeks to seize that mysterious principle which animates the 
matter of their organization, which maintains the nearly con- 
stant form of the compound by the continual renewal of the 
component molecules, and which at death, leaving this matter, 
surrenders it to the common laws, from the empire of which it 
was for a season withdrawn. 

. . . The facts which belong to it are such as we can 
touch and see — matter and its modifications. — Diet, des Sciences 
Philosoph. 
PICTURESQUE "properly means what is done in the style and 
with the spirit of a painter, and it was thus, if I am not 
much mistaken, that the word was commonly employed when 
it was first adopted in England. . . . But it has been 
frequently employed to denote those combinations or groups 
or attitudes of objects that are fitted for the purposes of the 
painter/' — Stewart, Philosoph. Essays, part L, chap. 5. 

" Picturesque is a word applied to every object, and every 
kind of scenery, which has been or might be represented with 
good effect in painting — just as the word beautiful, when wo 
speak of visible nature, is applied to every object and every 
kind of scenery that in any way give pleasure to the eye — and 



388 VOCABULARY. OF PHILOSOPHY. 

PICTURESQUE— 

these seem to be tlie significations of both words, taken in their 
most extended and popular sense." — Sir Uvedale Price, On the 
Picturesque, ch. 3. 

"The two qualities of roughness and of sudden variation, 
joined to that of irregularity, are the most efficient causes of 
the picturesque.'''' * — Hid. 

u Beauty and picturesqueness are founded on opposite quali- 
ties ; the one on smoothness, the other on roughness ; the one 
on grandeur, the other on sudden variation ; the one on ideas 
of youth and freshness, the other on those of age, and even 
of decay." — Chap. 4. 

PNEUMATICS is now applied to physical science, and means that 
department of it which treats of the mechanical properties of 
air and other elastic fluids. It was formerly used as synony- 
mous with pneumatoloy. 

PNEUMATOLOGY (nvsi/poi, spirit; Koyog, discourse). — The 
branch of philosophy which treats of the nature and operations 
of mind, has by some been called pneumatology. Philosophy 
gives ground for belief in the existence of our own mind and 
of the Supreme mind, but furnishes no evidence for the 
existence of orders of minds intermediate. Popular opinion 
is in favour of the belief. But philosophy has sometimes 
admitted and sometimes rejected it. It has found a place, 
however, in all religions. There may thus be said to be a 
religious pneumatology, and a philosophical pneumatology. In 
religious pneumatology, in the East, there is the doctrine of 
two antagonistic and equal spirits of good and evil. In the 
doctrines of Christianity there is acknowledged the existence 
of spirits intermediate between God and man, some of whom 
have fallen into a state of evil, while others have kept their first 
estate. 

Philosophy in its early stages is partly religious. Socrates 
had communication with a demon or spirit. Plato did not 
discountenance the doctrine, and the Neo-Platonicians of 
Alexandria carried pneumatology to a great length, and adopted 

* " A picturesque object may be defined as that which, from the greater facilities which 
it possesses for readily and more effectually enabling an artist to display his art, is, as it 
were, a provocation to painting."— Sir Thos. L. Dick, note to above chap. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 389 

PIVEUITIATOJL.OOY— 

the cabalistic traditions of the Jews. In the scholastic ages, 
the belief in return from the dead, apparitions and spirits, was 
universal. And Jacob Boehm, in Saxony, Emanuel Sweden- 
borg, in Sweden, and in France, Martinez Pasqualis and his 
disciple Saint Martin, have all given accounts of orders of 
spiritual beings who held communication with the living. And 
in the present day a belief in spirit rapping is prevalent in 
America. 

Bp. Berkeley, Principles of Human Knowledge, sect. 81, and 
throughout, admits the existence of orders of spirits. 

Considered as the science of mind or spirit, pneumatology 
consisted of three parts, treating of the Divine mind, Theology 
— the angelic mind, Angelology, and the human mind. This 
last is now called Psychology, " a term to which no competent 
objection can be made, and which affords us, what the various 
clumsy periphrases in use do. not, a convenient adjective — psy- 
chological" — Sir TV. Hamilton, ReitTs Works, p. 219, note. 
POETRY or POESY. — " However critics may differ as to the 
definition of poetry, all competent to offer an opinion on the 
subject will agree that occasionally, in prose, as well as in verse, 
we meet with a passage to which we feel that the term poetry 
could be applied, with great propriety, by a figure of speech. 
In the other arts also we find, now and then, what we feel 
prompted from .within to call the poetry of painting, of statuary, 
of music, or of whatever art it may be. The fact that books 
have been written under such figurative titles, and favourably 
received, proves that the popular mind conceives of something 
in poetry besides versification — of some spiritual excellence, 
most properly belonging to compositions in verse, but which is 
also found elsewhere. When Byron said that few poems of his 
day were half poetry, he evidently meant by poetry something 
distinguishable from rhythm and rhyme. True, such may be 
only a figurative use of the word; but the public accept that 
figurative use as corresponding to some actual conception which 
they entertain of poetry in its best degrees. And when they 
speak of the poetry of any other art, it is evident from the use 
of the same word that they believe themselves perceiving the 
same or similar qualities. To such conceptions, then, without 



390 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

POETRY- 

regard to whence they spring, I think, with Coleridge, that it 
would be expedient to appropriate the word poesy, thereby 
avoiding the ambiguity which now exists in the use of the word 
poetry; though popular choice, which always prefers a figurative 
application of a common word, has not adopted the suggestion." 
—Moffat, Study of ^Esthetics, p. 221. 

pollicitation.— V. Promise. 

POLYOAUIY (VoAt^, many; y&pog, marriage) means a plurality 
of wives or husbands. It has prevailed under various forms in 
all ages of the world. It can be shown, however, to be contrary 
to the light of nature ; and has been condemned and punished 
by the laws of many nations. About the middle of the six- 
teenth century, Bernardus Ochinus, general of the order of 
Capuchins, and afterwards a Protestant, published Dialogues 
in favour of polygamy, to which Theodore Beza wrote a reply. 
In 1682, a work entitled Polygamia Triumphatrix appeared 
under the name of Theophilus Aletheus. The true name of 
the author was Lyserus, a native of Saxony. In 1780, Martin 
Madan published Thelyphthora, or a Treatise on Female Ruin, 
in which he defended polygamy, on the part of the male. See 
some sensible remarks on this subject in Paley's Moral and 
Political Philosophy, book iii., ch. 6. 

POLYTHEISM (Kohl/;, many ; hos, god). — " To believe no one 
supreme designing principle or mind, but rather two, three, or 
more (though in their nature good), is to be a polytheist." — 
Shaftesbury, b. i., pt. i., sect. 2. 

Three forms of polytheism may be distinguished. 1. Idolatry, 
or the worship of idols and false gods, which prevailed in Greece 
and Rome. 2. Sabaism, or the worship of the stars and of fire, 
which prevailed in Arabia and in Chaldea. 3 . Fetichism, or 
the worship of anything that strikes the imagination and gives 
the notion of great power, which prevails in Africa and among 
savage nations in general. 

positive.— V. Moral, Term. 

POSITIVISM " One man affirms that to him the principle of all 

certitude is the testimony of the senses; this is positivism." — 
Morell, Philosoph. Tenden., p. 15. 

Of late years the name positivism has been appropriated to 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 391 

POSITIVISM— 

the peculiar principles advocated by M. Auguste Comte, in his 
Coars de Philosophic Positive. This philosophy is thus de- 
scribed by an admirer (G. H. Lewes, Comte's Philosoph. of 
Sciences, 1853, sect. 1): — u This is the mission of positivism, to 
generalize science, and to systematize sociality; in other words, 
it aims at creating a philosophy of the sciences, as a basis for 
a new social faith. A social doctrine is the aim of positivism, 
a scientific doctrine the means; just as in a man, intelligence is 
the minister and interpreter of life. 

14 The leading conception of M. Comte is : — There are but 
three phases of intellectual evolution — the theological (super- 
natural), the metaphysical, and the positive. In the supernatural 
phase, the mind seeks causes, unusual phenomena are inter- 
preted as the signs of the pleasure or displeasure of some god. 
In the metaphysical phase, the supernatural agents are set 
aside for abstract forces inherent in substances. In the positive 
phase, the mind restricts itself to the discovery of the laws of 
phenomena." 
POSSIBLE {possum, to be able). — That which may or can be. 
44 'Tis possible to infinite power to endue a creature with the 
power of beginning motion. 1 ' — Clarke, On Attributes, prop. 10. 

Possibilitas est consensio inter se, seu non repngnantia partium 
vel attributorum quibus res seu ens constituatur. 

A thing is said to be possible when, though not actually in 
existence, all the conditions necessary for realizing its existence 
are given. Thus we say it is possible that a plant or animal 
may be born, because there are in nature causes by which this 
may be brought about. But as everything which is born dies, 
we say it is impossible that a plant or animal should live 
for ever. A thing is possible, when there is no contradiction 
between the idea or conception of it and the realization of it ; 
and a thing is impossible when the conception of its realization 
or existence implies absurdity or contradiction. 

We apply the terms possible and impossible both to beings 
and events, chiefly on the ground of experience. In proportion 
as our knowledge of the laws of nature increases, we say it is 
possible that such things may be produced: and in proportion 
as our knowledge of human nature is enlarged, we say it is 



392 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

POSSIBLE— 

possible that such events may happen. But it is safer to say 
what is possible than what is impossible, because our knowledge 
of causes is increasing. 

There are three ways in which what is jiossible may be 
brought about; super naturally, naturally, and morally. The 
resurrection of the dead is super naturally possible, since it can 
only be realized by the power of God. The burning of wood 
is naturally or physically possible, because fire has the power to 
do so. It is morally possible that he who has often done wrong 
should yet in some particular instance do right. These epithets 
apply to the caiises by which the possible existence or event is 
realized. 

"Possible relates sometimes to contingency, sometimes to 
power or liberty, and these senses are frequently confounded. 
In the first sense we say, e. g., c It impossible this patient may- 
recover,' not meaning that it depends on his choice, but that 
we are not sure whether the event will not be such. In the 
other sense it is '•possible ' to the best man to violate every rule 
of morality ; since if it were out of his power to act so if he 
chose it, there would be no moral goodness in the case, though 
we are quite sure that such never will be his choice."-— Whately, 
Log., Appendix i. 

POSTULATE {u. i t?np<o&, postulatum, that which is asked or assumed 
in order to prove something else).— " According to some, the 
difference between axioms and postulates is analogous to that 
between theorems and problems ; the former expressing truths 
which are self-evident, and from which other propositions may 
be deduced ; the latter operations which may be easily per- 
formed, and by the help of which more difficult construetioDs 
may be effected." — Stewart, Elements, vol. iL, chap. 2, sect. 3, 
From Wallis. 

There is a difference between a postulate and a hypothesis. 
When you lay down something which may be, although you 
have not proved it, and which is admitted by the learner or 
the disputant, you make a hypothesis. The postulate not being 
assented to, may be contested during the discussion, and is only 
established by its conformity with all other ideas on the subject. 
In the philosophy of Kant, a postulate is neither a hypothesis 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 393 

POSTULATE— • 

nor a corollary, but a proposition of the same binding certainty, 
or whose certainty is incorporated with that of another, so that 
you must reject that other, all evident as it is in self, or admit 
at the same time what it necessarily supposes. He has three 
postulates. 

1. I am under obligation, therefore I am free. 

2. Practical reason tends necessarily to the sovereign good, 
which supposes an absolute conformity with the moral law; 
such conformity is holiness ; a perfection which man can only 
attain by an indefinite continuity of effort and of progress. 
This progress supposes continuity of existence, personal and 
identical, therefore the soul is immortal, or the sovereign good 
is a chimera. 

3. On the other hand, the sovereign good supposes felicity, 
but this results from the conformity of things with a will, and 
has for its condition, obedience to the moral law ; there must 
then be a harmony possible between morality and felicity, and 
this necessarily supposes a cause of the universe distinct from 
nature, — an intelligent cause, who is at the same time the 
Author of the moral law, and guarantee of this harmony of 
virtue and happiness, from which results the sovereign good ; 
then God exists, and is himself the primitive sovereign good, 
the source of all good. Kant's postulates of the practical 
reason are thus freedom, immortality, and God. — Willm, Hist, 
de la Philosoph. Allemande, torn, i., p. 420. 

POTENTIAL is opposed to actual — q. v. This antithesis is a fun- 
damental doctrine of the Peripatetic philosophy. " Aristotle 
saith, that divided they (*. e., bodies) be in infinitum potentially, 
but actually not." — Holland, Plutarch, p. 667. 

a Anaximander's infinite was nothing else but an infinite chaos 
of matter, in which were either actually or potentially contained 
all manner of qualities." — Cudworth, Intell. System, p. 128. 

POTENTIALITY! (Ivvupig). — V. CAPACITY. 

POWER (possum, to be able ; in Greek, Ivvoipii), says Mr. Locke 
(Essay on Hum. Understand., b. ii., ch. 21), "may be con- 
sidered as twofold, viz., as able to make, or able to receive, 
any change : the one may be called active, and the other pas- 
sive power." Dr. Reid, in reference to this distinction, says 



394 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 



i 



POWER— 

(Act. Pow., essay i., chap. 3), u Whereas he distinguishes 
power into active and passive, I conceive passive power to be 
no power at all. He means by it the possibility of being 
changed. To call this power seems to be a misapplication of 
the word. I do not remember to have met with the phrase 
passive power in any other good author. Mr. Locke seems to 
have been unlucky in inventing it ; and it deserves not to be 
retained in our language." "This paragraph," says Sir W. 
Hamilton (ReiaVs Works, p. 519, note), " is erroneous in 
almost all its statements." The distinction between power as 
active and passive, is clearly taken by Aristotle. But he says 
that in one point of view they are but one power (Metaphys., 
lib. v., cap. 12), while in another they are two (Metaphys., lib. 
ix., cap. 1). He also distinguishes powers into rational and 
irrational — into those which we have by nature, and those 
which we acquire by repetition of acts. These distinctions 
have been generally admitted by subsequent philosophers. 
Dr. Reid, however, only used the word power to signify active 
power. That we have the idea of power, and how we come by it, 
he shows in opposition to Hume (Act. Pow., essay i., chap. 2, 4). 
According to Mr. Hume, we have no proper notion of power. 
It is a mere relation which the mind conceives to exist between 
one thing going before, and another thing coming after. All 
that we observe is merely antecedent and consequent. Neither 
sensation nor reflection furnishes us with any idea of power or 
efficacy in the antecedent to produce the consequent. The 
views of Dr. Brown are somewhat similar. It is when the 
succession is constant — when the antecedent is uniformly 
followed by the consequent, that we call the one cause, and 
the other effect ; but we have no ground for believing that 
there is any other relation between them or any virtue in the 
one to originate or produce the other, that is, that we have no 
proper idea of power. Now, that our idea of power cannot be 
explained by the philosophy which derives all our ideas from 
sensation and reflection, is true. Power is not an object of 
sense. All that we observe is succession. But when we see 
one thing invariably succeeded by another, we not only connect 
the one as effect and the other as cause, and view them under 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 395 

POWER— 

that relation, but we frame the idea of power, and conclude 
that there is a virtue, an efficacy, a force, in the one thing to 
originate or produce the other ; and that the connection be- 
tween them is not only uniform and unvaried, but universal 
and necessary. This is the common idea of power, and that 
there is such an idea framed and entertained by the human 
mind cannot be denied. The legitimacy and validity of the 
idea can be fully vindicated. 

"In the strict sense, power and agency are attributes of 
mind only ; and I think that mind only can be a cause in the 
strict sense. This power, indeed, may be where it is not 
exerted, and so may be without agency or causation ; but 
there can be no agency or causation without power to act and 
to produce the effect. As far as I can judge, to everything 
we call a cause we ascribe power to produce the effect. In 
intelligent causes, the power may be without being exerted ; 
so I have power to run when I sit still or walk. But in inani- 
mate causes we conceive no power but what is exerted, and, 
therefore, measure the power of the cause by the effect which 
it actually produces. The power of an acid to dissolve iron is 
measured by what it actually dissolves. We get the notion of 
active power, as well as of cause and effect, as I think, from 
what we feel in ourselves. We feel in ourselves a power to 
move our limbs, and to produce certain effects when we choose. 
Hence we get the notion of power, agency, and causation, in the 
strict and philosophical sense ; and this I take to be our first 
notion of these three things." — Dr. Reid, Correspondence, pp. 
77, 78. 

" The liability of a thing to be influenced by a cause is called 
passive power, or more properly susceptibility ; while the effi- 
cacy of the cause is called active power. Heat has the power 
of melting wax ; and in the language of some, ice has the power 
of being melted."— Day, On the Will, p. 33.— V. Cause. 

It is usual to speak of a power of resistance in matter : and 
of a power of endurance in mind. Both these are passive 
power. Active power is the principle of action, whether im- 
manent or transient. Passive power is the principle of bearing 
or receiving. 



396 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

POWER— 

Aristotle, Metaphys., lib. viii., cap. 1; Locke, Essay on Hum. 
Understand., b. ii., chap. 21 ; Hobbes, Opera, torn, i., p. 113, 
edit, by Moles worth. 

PHACTICAL (German, pralctiscli). — The strict meaning of this 
word in the philosophy of Kant, is immediate will- determining, ' 
and the Critick of Practical Reason is nothing else but the 
critick of that faculty of reason which immediately determines 
the will. — Haywood, Critick of Pure Reason, p. 401. 

PREDICATE, I»RiEI>I£ABJiE, and PREDICAMENT, are 
all derived from prozdico, to affirm. A predicate is that which 
is actually affirmed of any one, as wisdom of Peter. A prcedi- 
cable is that which may be affirmed of many, as sun may be 
affirmed of other suns besides that of our system. A predica- 
ment is a series, order, or arrangement of predicates and prcedi- 
cables in some summum genus, as substance, or quality. 

What is affirmed or denied is called the prcedicate ; and that 
of which it is affirmed or denied is called the subject — Monboddo, 
Ancient Metaphys., vol. v., p. 152. — V. Attribute, Category, 
Universal. 
Prsedicahles. — " Whatever term can be affirmed of several 
things, must express either their ivhole essence, which is called 
the species ; or a part of their essence (viz., either the material 
part, which is called the genus, or the formal and distinguishing 
part, which is called differentia, or in common discourse, char- 
acteristic), or something joined to the essence ; whether neces- 
sarily (i. e., to the whole species, or in other words, universally, 
to every individual of it), which is called a property; or 
contingently (i. e., to some individuals only of the species), 
which is an acccident. 

Every Prasdicable expresses either 

The whole essence of its , f it p „spTirp Or something joined^ 

subject, viz., Species. or part or its essence. t0 itg essence# 



Property. Accident. 



Universal but Peculiar but Universal and ' TtivnaraWp qemrablp 

not Peculiar, not Universal. Peculiar. Inseparable, beparable. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 397 

PR.EDICATE- 

•• Genu?, species, differentia, proprimn, aeeidens. might, with 
more propriety perhaps, have been called the five classes of pre- 
dicates: but use has determined them to be called the five pre- 
dicables." — Reid, Account of Aristotle's Logic. 
Prae die anient. — These most comprehensive signs of things (the 
categories), are called in Latin the prcedicaments, because they 
can be said or preedicated in the same sense of all other terms, 
as veil as of all the objects denoted by them, whereas no other 
term can be correctly said of them, because no other is em- 
ployed to express the full extent of their meaning." — Gillies, 
Analysis c>f Aristotle, c. 2. 
Prae-prsedieanienta and Po§t-pra?dicamenta. — " The Greek Lo- 
gicians divided their speculations on this subject into three 
sections, calling the first section to ttoo tq'j xxtys/opiZ'; \ the 
second, to ttzsI gtvraM zuTrr/oiiZ; 1 ; the third, to y.srcc rug 
xctrrr/c^x:. — Amnion, in Prcedic. p. 116. The Latins adher- 
ing to the same division, coin new names : ante-prcedicamenta, 
• r-prcE die amenta, prcedic amenta zvApost-prcedicamenta.-' — 
Sanderson, pp. 22. 51. 55. ed. Oxon.. 1672. 
PREJTDICE (prejudice, to judge before inquiry). — A prejudice 
is a pre-judging, that is forming or adopting an opinion con- 
cerning anything, before the grounds of it have been fairly or 
fully considered. The opinion may be true or false, but in so 
far as the grounds of it have not been examined, it is erroneous 
or without proper evidence, •■ In most cases prejudices are 
opinions which, on some account, men are pleased with, inde- 
pendently of any conviction of their truth ; and which, there- 
fore they are afraid to examine, lest they should find them 
to be false. P . then, are unreasonable judgments, 

formed or held imder the influence of some other motive than 
the love of truth. They may therefore be classed according to 
the nature of the motives from which they result. These motives 
are. either, 1. Pleasurable, innocent, and social: or, 2. They 
are malignant." — Taylor. Elements of Thought. 

Dr. Reid (Intel!. Poiv., essay vi., chap. 8) has treated ot' 

s or the causes of error, according to the classification 

given of them by Lord Bacon, under the name of idols — q. v. 

Mr. Locke has treated of the causes of error (Essay on Hum. 



398 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

PREJUDICE- 

Understand., book iv., chap. 20). And some excellent obser- 
vations on the prejudices peculiar to men of study, may be 
seen in Malebranche, Search after Truth, book ii., part 2. 

PREMISS (propositions prcemissce, propositions which go before 
the conclusion, and from which it is inferred). —A regular 
syllogism consists of two premisses and a conclusion. The two 
premisses are sometimes called the antecedent, and the conclu- 
sion the consequent. 

PRESCIENCE {prcescio, to know before it happens). — u The 
prescience of God is so vast and exceeding the comprehension 
of our thoughts, that all that can be safely said of it is this, 
that this knowledge is most exquisite and perfect, accu- 
rately representing the natures, powers, and properties of 
the thing it does foreknow." — More, Immortality of Soul, 
b. ii., ch. 4. 

The prescience of God may be argued from the perfection of 
his nature. It is difficult or rather impossible for us to con- 
ceive of it, because we have no analogous faculty. Our obscure 
and inferential knowledge of what is future, is not to be likened 
to his clear and direct* beholding of all things. Many attempts 
have been made to reconcile the prescience of God with the 
liberty of man. Each truth must rest upon its own proper 
evidence. — St. Augustin, On the Spirit and the Letter ; Bossuet, 
Traite du Libre Arbitre ; Leibnitz, Theodicee ; Fenelon, Exis- 
tence de Dieu. 

PREVENTATIVE. — V. KNOWLEDGE. 

PRIMARY (primus, first) is opposed to secondary. u Those 
qualities or properties, without which we cannot even imagine 
a thing to exist, are called primary qualities. Extension and 
solidity are called primary qualities of matter — colour, taste, 
smell, are called secondary qualities of matter." — Taylor, 
Elements of Thought. 

* When the late Sir James Mackintosh was visiting the school for the deaf and dumb 
at Paris, then under the care of the Abbe* Sicard, he is said to have addressed this ques- 
tion in writing to one of the pupils,— "Doth God reason?" The pupil for a short time 
appeared to be distressed and confused, but presently wrote on his slate, the following 
answer :— "To reason is to hesitate, to doubt, to inquire: it is the highest attribute of 
a limited intelligence. God sees all things, foresees all things, knows all things ; there- 
for God doth not reason."— Gurney, On Habit and Discipline, p. 138. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 399 

PRIM4RY- 

Descartes, Locke, Reid, Stewart, Phil. Essays, ii., chap. 2. 
Sir T\\ Hamilton, Re'uTs Works, note d. — V. Matter. 
PRIXCIPIA ESSEXDI or PRL>CIPLES OF BEING are 

distinguished into the principle of origination and the prrinciple 
of dependence. 

The only proper principle of origination is God, who gives 
essence and existence to all beings. 

The principle of dependence is distinguished into that of 
causality and that of inherence, or effective dependence, as the 
effect depends upon its cause, and subjective dependence, as the 
quality inheres or depends on its subject or substance. 
PRINCIPLE (principium, £oys,. a beginning). — "A principle is 
that which being derived from nothing, can hold of nothing. 
' Principio autem nulla est origo,' said Cicero. • nam ex principia 
oriuntur omnia: ipsum autem nulla ex re; nee enim id esset 
principium quod gigneretur aliunde.' " — Sir Will. Drummond. 
Acad. Quest., p. 5. 

Aristotle (Metaphys., lib. iv., cap. 1) has noticed several 
meanings of ciox't- which is translated principle, and has added 
— " What is common to all first principles is that they are 
the primary source from which anything is, becomes, or is 
known." 

The word is applied equally to thought and to being : and 
hence principles have been divided into those of being and 
those of knowledge, or principia essendi and principia cogno- 
scendi, or. according to the language of German philosophers, 
principles formal and principles real. Principia essendi may 
also be principia cognoscendi. for the fact that things exist is 
the ground or reason of their being known. But the converse 
does not hold : for the existence of things is in no way de- 
pendent upon our knowledge of them. 

Ancient philosophy was almost exclusively occupied with 
principles of being, investigating the origin and elements of 
all things, while, on the other hand, modern philosophy has 
been chiefly devoted to principles of knowledge, ascertaining the 
laws and elements of thought, and determining then- validity 
in reference to the knowledge which they give. 
PRINCIPLES OF KNOWLEDGE are those truths by means of 



400 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

MfclNCIMiES— 

which other truths are known. They have been distinguished 
into simple and complex, that is, they may be found in the form 
of ideas, as substance, cause— or in the form of propositions, 
as in the affirmation that every change implies the operation 
of a cause, or in the negation that qualities do not exist with- 
out a substance. Complex principles have been arranged in 
three classes, viz., hypotheses, definitions, and axioms. Hypo- 
theses and definitions have been called 0st/*«, that is, conven- 
tional principles or truths assumed or agreed on for the purpose 
of disputation or teaching, and are confined to the department 
of knowledge to which they peculiarly belong. Axioms are 
principles true in themselves, and extending to all departments 
of knowledge. These were called (pvaivx or ^^t«, and are 
such as the mind of man naturally and at once accepts as true. 
They correspond with the first truths, primitive beliefs, or 
principles of common sense of the Scottish philosophy. — V. 
Common Sense, Axiom. 

"The word principle" says Mr. Stewart (Elements, vol. i., 
chap. 1, sect. 2), u in its proper acceptation; seems to me to 
denote an assumption (whether resting on fact or on hypo- 
thesis) upon which, as a datum, a train of reasoning proceeds ; 
and for the falsity or incorrectness of which no logical rigour 
in the subsequent process can compensate. Thus the gravity 
and the elasticity of the air are principles of reasoning, in our 
speculations about the barometer. The equality of the angles 
of incidence and reflection , the proportionality of the sines of 
incidence and refraction, are principles of reasoning in catop- 
trics and in dioptrics. In a sense perfectly analogous to this, 
the definitions of geometry (all of which are merely hypothetical) 
are the first principles of reasoning in the subsequent demon- 
stration, and the basis on which the whole fabric of the science 
rests." b 

Lord Herbert, De Veritate; Buffier, Treatise of First Truths; 
Reid, Intell. Pow., essay vi. 
Principles as Express or as Operative correspond to principles 
of knowing and of being. An express principle asserts a pro- 
position ; as, truth is to be spoken. An operative principle 
prompts to action or produces change, as when a man takes 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 401 

PRINCIPLES— 

food to satisfy hunger. An express principle asserts an original 
law and is regulative. An operative principle is an original 
element and is constitutive. 
PRINCIPLES OF ACTION may either mean those express 
principles which regulate or ought to regulate human action, 
or those operating or motive principles which prompt human 
action. The latter, which is the common application of the 
phrase, is its psychological meaning. 

When applied to human action psychologically, the word 
principle is used in the sense of the principle of dependence ; 
and to denote that the action depends upon the agent for its 
being produced. It may signify the dependence of causality, 
that is, that the action depends for its production on the agent, 
as its efficient cause ; or it may signify the dependence of 
inherence, that is, that the action depends for its production on 
some power or energy which inheres in the agent as its subject. 
Hence it has been said that a principle of action is twofold — 
the principium quod, and the principium quo. Thus, man as an 
active being is the principium quod or efficient cause of an 
action being produced; his will, or the power by which he 
determines to act, is the principium quo. 

But the will itself is stimulated or moved to exert itself; 
and in this view may be regarded as the principium quod, 
while that which moves or stimulates it, may be regarded as 
the principium quo. Before we act, we deliberate, that is, we 
contemplate the action in its nature and consequences ; we 
then resolve or determine to do it or not to do it, and the per- 
formance or omission follows. Volition, then, or an exercise of 
will is the immediate antecedent of action. But the will is 
called into exercise by certain influences which are brought to 
bear upon it. Some object of sense or of thought is contem- 
plated. We are affected with pleasure or pain. Feelings of 
complacency or displacency, of liking or disliking, of satisfac- 
tion or disgust, are awakened. Sentiments of approbation or 
disapprobation are experienced. We pronounce some things 
to be good, and others to be evil, and feel corresponding 
inclination or aversion ; and under the influence of those states 
and affections of mind, the will is moved to activity. The 
2d 



402 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

PRINCIPLES- 

forms which these feelings of pleasure or pain, of inclination or 
tendency to or from an object, may assume, are many and 
various ; arising partly from the nature of the objects contem- 
plated, and partly from the original constitution and acquired 
habits of the mind contemplating. But they are all denom- 
inated, in a general way, principles of action. 
PRIVATION (ari^iff/s^ privatio). — U A privation is the absence of 
what does naturally belong to the thing we are speaking of, or 
which ought to be present with it ; as when a man or a horse 
is deaf, or blind, or dead, or if a physician or a divine be 
unlearned, these are called privations.'' — Watts, Log., pt. i., 
c. 2. 

The principles of all natural bodies are matter and form. 
u To these Aristotle has added a third which he calls are^a^ 
or privation, an addition that he has thought proper to make 
to the Pythagorean and Platonic philosophy, in order to give 
his system the appearance of novelty ; but without any necessity, 
as I apprehend ; for it is not a cause, as he himself admits, such 
as matter and form, but is only that without which the first 
matter could not receive the impression of any form ; for it 
must be clear of every form, which is what he calls privation , 
before it can admit of any. 

" 2sow, this is necessarily implied in the notion of matter ; 
for as it has the capacity of all form, so it has the privation of 
all form. In this way, Aristotle himself has explained the 
nature of matter (Physic, lib. i., cap. 8). And Plato, in the 
Timceus, has very much insisted upon this quality of matter as 
absolutely necessary, in order to fit it to receive all forms; and 
he illustrates his meaning by a comparison : — Those, says he, 
who make unguents or perfumes, prepare the liquid so, to 
which they are to give the perfume, that it may have no odour 
of its own. And, in like manner, those who take off an im- 
pression of anything upon any soft matter, clear that matter of 
every other impression, making it as smooth as possible, in 
order that it may better receive the figure or image intended. 
In like manner, he says, matter, in order to receive the speeieses 
of all things, must in itself have the species of nothing." — 
Monboddo, Ancient Metaphys., book ii., chap. 2. Hence pri- 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 403 

PRIVATION— 

ration was defined — Negatio format in subjecto apto ad habendam 
talem formam. 

According to Plato, privation, in the sense of limitation, 
imperfection, is the inherent condition of all finite existence, 
and the necessary cause of evil. — Leibnitz, after Augustin, 
Aquinas, and others, held similar views. Causa Dei, sect. 69, 
72. Essais Sur la Bonte de Dieu, 1, partie, sect. 29, 31 ; 3, 
partie, sect. 378. — V. Negation. 

iPROBAEaiiiTV— V. Chances. 

PROBABLE (probabilis, provable). — That which does not admit 
of demonstration and does not involve absurdity or contradic- 
tion, is probable, or admits of proof. " As demonstration is the 
showing the agreement or disagreement of two ideas, by the 
intervention of one or more proofs, which have a constant, 
immutable, and visible connection one with another ; so pro- 
bability is nothing but the appearance of such an agreement or 
disagreement, by the intervention of proofs, whose connection 
is not constant and immutable, or at least is not perceived to 
be so, but is, or appears for the most part to be so, and is 
enough to induce the mind to judge the proposition to be true 
or false, rather than the contrary The entertain- 
ment the mind gives this sort of propositions, is called belief, 
assent, or opinion, which is admitting or receiving any pro- 
position for true, upon arguments or proofs that are found to 
persuade us to receive it as true, without certain knowledge 
that it is so. And herein lies the difference between probability 
and certainty, faith and knowledge, that in all the parts of 
knowledge there is intuition ; each immediate idea, each step, 
has its visible and certain connection ; in belief, not so. That 
which makes us believe, is something extraneous to the thing 
I believe ; something not evidently joined on both sides to, and 
so not manifestly showing the agreement, or disagreement, of 
those ideas that are under consideration. 

" The grounds of probability are first, the conformity of any- 
thing with our own knowledge, observation, and experience. 
Second, the testimony of others, touching their observation 
and experience." — Locke, Essay on Hum. Understand^ book 
iv., chap. 15. Kcid, Intell. Pair., essay vii., chap. 3. 



404 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

PROBABLE- 

u Tho word probable,'' says Mr. Stewart {Elements, part ii. 7 
chap. 2, sect. 4), "does not imply any deficiency in the proof, 
but only marks the particular nature of that proof, as contra- 
distinguished from another species of evidence. It is opposed 
not to what is certain, but to what admits of being demonstrated 
after the manner of the mathematicians. This differs widely 
from the meaning annexed to the same word in popular dis- 
course ; according to which, whatever event is said to be 
probable, is understood to be expected with some degree of 

doubt But although, in philosophical language, 

the epithet probable be applied to events which are acknow- 
ledged to be certain, it is also applied to events which are 
called probable by the vulgar. The philosophical meaning of 
the word, therefore, is more comprehensive than the popular ; 
the former denoting that particular species of evidence of which 
contingent truths admit ; the latter being confined to such 
degrees of this evidence as fall short of the highest. These 
different degrees of probability the philosopher considers as a 
series, beginning with bare possibility, and terminating in that 
apprehended infallibility, with which the phrase moral certainty 
is synonymous. To this last term of the series, the word pro- 
bable is, in its ordinary acceptation, plainly inapplicable." 

PROBIiElTI (tt^o/3?;^^, from tt^/3^aa6j, to throw down, to put 
in question). — Any point attended with doubt or difficulty, any 
proposition which may be attacked or defended by probable 
arguments, may be called a problem. Every department of 
inquiry has questions, the answers to which are problematical. 
So that, according to the branch of knowledge to which they 
belong, problems maybe called Physical, Metaphysical, Logical, 
Moral, Mathematical, Historical. Literary, &c. Aristotle dis- 
tinguished three classes, — the moral or practical, which may 
influence our conduct : as, whether pleasure is the chief good : 
the speculative or scientific, which merely add to our knowledge ; 
as, whether the world is eternal : and the auxiliary, or those 
questions which we seek to solve with a view to other questions. 

PROGRESS.-^. Perfectibility. 

PROMISE and POLLICITATION. Promittimus rogati—pol- 
licemur ultro. — A pollicitation is a spontaneous expression of 



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406 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

PBOOF- 

our premises are given, and we have to seek for a conclusion. 
Proving may be compared to the act of putting away any article 
into the proper receptacle of goods of that description, inferring 
to that of bringing out the article when needed." — See Evi- 
dence, Inference. 
PROPEB1Y may be distinguished from quality or attribute, and 
also from faculty. 

Qualities are primary or secondary, essential or non-essential. 
The former are called attributes, and the latter properties. 
Extension is the attribute of matter, taste and smell are pro- 
perties of body. 

Faculty implies understanding and will, and so is applicable 
only to mind. We speak of the properties of bodies, but not 
of their faculties. Of mind we may say will is a faculty or 
property; so that while all faculties are properties, all properties 
are not faculties. 
PBOPEETY (Ckjnea-ic) is the property of a subaltern genus, 
and which may be predicated of all the subordinate species. 
" Voluntary motion " is the generic property of " animal." 
PROPEISTY (Specific) is the property of an inftma species, and 
which may be predicated of all the individuals contained under 
it. u Risibility " is the specific property of a man." 
PROPOSITION". — A judgment of the mind expressed in words is 
a proposition. 

" A proposition, according to Aristotle, is a speech wherein 
one thing is affirmed or denied of another. Hence it is easy to 
distinguish the thing affirmed or denied, which is called the 
predicate, from the thing of which it is affirmed or denied, 
which is called the subject ; and these two are called the terms 
of the proposition ." — Reid, Account of Aristotle\s Logic, chap. 
2, sect. G. 

As to their substance, propositions are Categorical (subdivided 
into pure and modal), and Hypothetical (subdivided into con- 
ditional and disjunctive). 

A Categorical proposition declares a thing, absolutely, as, U I 
love," or a Man is not infallible." These are pure categoricals, 
asserting simply the agreement and disagreement of sub- 
ject and predicate. Modal categoricals assert the manner of 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 407 

PROPOSITION— 

i-nient and disagreement between subject and predicate; 
as. "The wisest man may possibly be mistaken.'* "A preju- 
diced historian will probably misrepresent the matter.'' 

A Hypothetical proposition asserts, not absolutely, but under 
a hypothesis. Such propositions are denoted by the conjunc- 
tions used in stating them. "If man is fallible, he is imperfect." 
This is called a conditional proposition, denoted by the con- 
: on •• if." "It is either day or night. v This is a disjunc- 
,-ypothetical, and is denoted by the disjunctive conjunction 
•• either." 

As to their quality, propositions are either affirmative or 
negative, according as the predicate is said to agree or not to 
E with the subject. "Man -is' an animal."' "Man -is 
not' perfect." As to their quantity, propositions are universal 
or particular, according as the predicate is affirmed or denied 
of the whole of the subject, or only of part of the subject. " All 
tyrants are miserable." " Xo miser is rich." " Some islands 
are fertile." " Most men are fond of novelty." 

Another division of propositions having reference to their 
:ity is into singular and indefinite. A singular proposition 
is one of which the subject is an individual (either a proper 
name, a singular pronoun, or a common noun with a singular 
sign). ■• Caesar overcame Pompey." "I am the person." 
"This fable is instructive." But as these propositions predicate 
of the the subject, they fall under the rules that govern 

rsals. An indefinite or undesignate proposition is one that 
has no sign of universality or particularity affixed to it. and its 
quantity must be ascertained by the matter of it, that is. by 
the nature of the connection between the extremes. 

As to their matter, propositions are either necessary, or 
. or contingent. In necessary and in impossible 
matter, an indefinite is understood as a universal; as, " Birds 
have wings :" i. e., all. " Birds are not quadrupeds ;" i. e., none. 
In contingent matter, that is. where the terms sometimes agree 
and sometimes not. an indefinite is understood as particular : as, 
"Food is necessary to life - one kind of food. " Birds 

sing:" i. v.. some birds sing. " Birds are not carnivorous;" i. e.. 
some birds are not : or, all are not. — V. Judgment. Opposition. 



408 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

PROPRIETY (to tt Pskov, that which is fit or congruous to the 
agent, and the relations in which he is placed). — This, accord- 
ing to some, is that which characterizes an action as right, and 
an agent as virtuous. "According to Plato, to Aristotle, and 
to Zeno, virtue consists in the propriety of conduct, or in the 
suitableness of the affection from which we act, to the object 
which excites it." 

Adam Smith (Theory ofMor. Sent., part vii., sect. 2, chap. 1) 
treats of those systems which make virtue consist in propriety. 

PROPRIU3JI (The) or Property is a predicable which denotes 
something essentially conjoined to the essence of the species. — 
Whately, Log., book ii., chap. 5, sect. 3. 

Proprium is applied, — 1. To what belongs to some one but 
not to all, as to be a philosopher in respect of man. 2. To 
what belongs to a species, but not to it only, as blackness in 
respect of a crow. 3. To what belongs to all of the species, 
and to that only, but not always, as to grow hoary in respect 
of man. 4. To what belongs to species, to all of it, to it only, 
and always, as laughter in respect of man. This last is truly 
the proprium. Quod speciei toti, soli et semper convenit. — 
Derodon, Log., p. 37. 

"There is a proprium which belongs to the whole species, 
but not to the sole species, as sleeping belongs to man. There 
is a proprium which belongs to the sole species, but not to the 
whole species, as to be a magistrate. There is a proprium 
which belongs to the whole species, and to the sole species, 
but not always, as laughing ; and there is a proprium which 
always belongs to it, as to be risible, that is, to have the faculty 
of laughing. Can one forbear laughing when he represents 
to himself these poor things, uttered with a mouth made 
venerable by a long beard, or repeated by a trembling and 
respectful disciple?" — Crousaz, Art of Thinking, part i., sect. 
3, chap. 5. 

PROSYLLOOISIVI. — V. EPICHEIREMA. 

PROVERB. — The Editor of the fourth edition of Kay's Proverbs 
says, u A proverb is usually denned, an instructive sentence, 
or common and pithy saying, in which more is generally 
designed than expressed ; famous for its peculiarity and 
elegance, and therefore adopted by the learned as well as 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 409 

PROVERB— 

the vulgar, by which it is distinguished from counterfeits, 
which want such authority." 

Lord John Russell's definition of a proverb is, "the wit of 
one, the wisdom of many." — Moore, Diary, vol. vii., p. 204. 

Proverbs embody the current and practical philosophy of an 
age or nation. Collections of them have been made from the 
earliest times. The book of Scripture called the Proverbs 
of Solomon, contains more than one collection. They have 
always been common in the East. Burckhardt made a collec- 
tion of Arabian proverbs, which was published at London in 
1830. Seller published at Augsburg, in 1816, The Wisdom 
of the Streets, or, the Meaning and Use of German Proverbs. 
Kay's Proverbs, Allan Ramsay's Proverbs, Henderson's Proverbs, 
have been published among ourselves. 

Backer (Geo. de) has Le Dictionnaire de Proverbes Francais, 
8vo, 1710 ; rare and curious. Panckouke published his Dic- 
tionnaire des Proverbes in imitation of it. 
PROVIDENCE. — "What in opposition to Fate," said Jacobi, 
"constitutes the ruling principle of the universe into a true 
God, is Providence.'''' 

Providence is a word which leads us to think of conservation 
and superintending, or upholding and governing. Whatever 
is created can have no necessary nor independent existence ; 
the same power which called it into being must continue to 
uphold it in being. And if the beauty and order which appear 
in the works of nature prove them to be the effects of an intel- 
ligent designing cause, the continuance of that beauty and 
order argues the continued operation of that cause. So that 
the same arguments which prove the existence of God imply his 
providence. With regard to the extent of providence, some have 
regarded it as general, and reaching only to things regarded 
as a whole, and to great and important results, while others 
regard it as particular, and as embracing every individual and 
every event. But the same arguments which prove that there 
is a providence, prove that it must be particular ; or rather, 
when properly understood, there is no inconsistency bet wren 
the two views. The providence of God can only be called 
general from its reaching to every object and event, and this is 



410 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

the sense in which we are to understand a particular providence. 
But while the provide?ice of God extends to every particular, 
it proceeds according to general laws. And while these laws 
are fixed and stable, they may be so fixed as to admit of what 
we think deviations ; so that both what we call the law, and what 
we call the deviation from the law, may be embraced in the 
plan of providence. As to the way in which this plan is carried 
forward, some have had recourse to the supposition of a plastic 
nature, intermediate between the Creator and the creature, — 
others to an energy communicated from the Creator to the 
creature. But the true view is to regard all things and all 
events as upheld and governed by the continual presence and 
power of God. There is a difficulty in reconciling this view 
with the freedom and responsibility of man, but it is not im- 
possible to do so. — Sherlock, On Providence; M c Cosh, Meth. 
of Div. Govern., b. ii., ch. 2. 
PRUDENCE (prudentia, contracted for providentia, foresight or 
forethought) is one of the virtues which were called cardinal 
by the ancient ethical writers. It may be described as the 
habit of acting at all times with deliberation and forethought. 
It is equally removed from rashness on the one hand, and 
timidity or irresolution on the other. It consists in choosing 
the best ends, and prosecuting them by the most suitable means. 
It is not only a virtue in itself, but necessary to give lustre to 
all the other virtues. 

a The rules of prudence in general, like the laws of the stone 
tables, are for the most part prohibitive. Thou slialt not is 
their characteristic formula : and it is an especial part of 
Christian prudence that it should be so. Nor would it be 
difficult to bring under this head all the social obligations 
that arise out of the relations of the present life, which the 
sensual understanding (to (pgovy/xoi. rq$ (rupxos, Bom. viii. 6) is 
of itself able to discover, and the performance of which, under 
favourable circumstances, the merest worldly self-interest, 
without love or faith, is sufficient to enforce ; but which 
Christian prudence enlivens by a higher principle and renders 
symbolic and sacramental (Ephes. v. 32)." 

" Morality may be compared to the consonant ; prudence to 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 411 

PBITDENCE- 

the vowel. The former cannot be uttered (reduced to practice) 
but by means of the latter. 

u The Platonic division of the duties of morality commences 
with the prudential or the habit of act and purpose proceeding 
from enlightened self-interest (qui animi imperio, corporis ser~ 
vitio, rerum auxilio, in proprium siti commodum et sibi providus 
utitur, hunc esse prudentem statuimus) ; ascends to the moral, 
that is, to the purifying and remedial virtues ; and seeks its 
summit in the imitation of the divine nature. In this last 
division, answering to that which we have called the spiritual, 
Plato includes all those inward acts and aspirations, waitings, 
and watchings, which have a growth in godlikeness for their 
immediate purpose, and the union of the human soul with the 
supreme good as their ultimate object." — Coleridge, Aids to 
Reflection, vol. i., pp. 13, 21, 22— F. Morality. 

PSYCHISUI (from ipvxh soul) is the word chosen by Mons. 
Quesne (Lettres sur le Psycliisme, 8vo, Paris, 1852) to denote 
the doctrine that there is a fluid, diffused throughout all 
nature, animating equally all living and organized beings, 
and that the difference which appears in their actions comes 
of their particular organization. The fluid is general, the 
organization is individual. 

This opinion differs from that of Pythagoras, who held that 
the soul of a man passed individually into the body of a brute. 
He (Mons. Quesne) holds that while the body dies the soul 
does not ; the organization perishes, but not the psychal or 
psychical fluid. 

PSYCHOLOGY (^#'<S, the soul ; Aoyo^, discourse). — The name 
may be new, but the study is old. It is recommended in the 
saying ascribed to Socrates — Know thyself. The recommen- 
dation is renewed in the Cogito ergo sum of Descartes ; and 
in the writings of Malebranche, Arnauld, Leibnitz, Locke, 
Berkeley, and Hume, psychological inquiries held a prominent 
place. Still further prominence was given to them by the 
followers of Kant and Reid, and psychology, instead of being 
partially treated as an introduction to Logic, to Ethics, and to 
Metaphysics, which all rest on it, is now treated as a separate 
department of science. It is that knowledge of the mind and 



412 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

PSYCHOLOGY— 

its faculties which we derive from a careful examination of the 
facts of consciousness. Life and the functions of our organized 
body belong to physiology; and, although there is a close 
connection between soul and body, and mutual action and 
reaction between them, that is no reason why the two depart- 
ments of inquiry should be confounded, unless to those who 
think the soul to be the product or result of bodily organiza- 
tion. Broussais said, he could not understand those philo- 
sophers who shut their eyes and their ears in order to hear 
themselves think. But if the capacity of thinking be anterior 
to, and independent of, sense and bodily organs, then the soul 
which thinks, and its faculties or powers of thinking, deserve 
a separate consideration. — See Memoire, par Mons. Jouffroy, 
De la Legitimite et de la Distinction de la Psychologic et de 
la Physiologic (published in his Nouveaux Melanges, and also 
in the 11th vol. of Memoir es de VAcad. des Sciences Morales et 
Politiques). 

Mr. Stewart (Prelim. Diss, to Philosoph. Essays, p. 24) 
objects to the use of the term psychology, though it is sanc- 
tioned by Dr. Campbell and Dr. Beattie, as implying a hypo- 
thesis concerning the nature or essence of the sentient or think- 
ing principle, altogether unconnected with our conclusions 
concerning its phenomena and general laws. The hypothesis 
implied is that the sentient or thinking principle is different 
in its nature or essence from matter. But this hypothesis is 
not altogether unconnected with its phenomena. On the 
contrary, it is on a difference of the phenomena which they 
present that we ground the distinction between mind and 
matter. It is true that the reality of the distinction may be 
disputed. There are philosophers who maintain that there is 
but one substance — call it either matter or mind. And the ques- 
tion, when pushed to this extremity, cannot be solved by the 
human intellect. God only knows whether the two substances 
which we call matter and mind have not something which is 
common to both. But the phenomena which they exhibit are 
so different as to lead us to infer a difference in the cause. 
And all that is implied in using the term psychology is, that 
the phenomena of the sentient or thinking principle are differ- 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 413 

PSYCHOLOGY- 

ent from the phenomena of matter. And, notwithstanding 
the objection of Mr. Stewart, the term is now current, espe- 
cially on the continent— to denote the science of the human 
mind as manifested by consciousness. 

Dr. Priestley at one time maintained the materiality of 
mind, and at another the spirituality of matter. The apostle 
speaks of a spiritual body. A body which is spirit sounds to 
us contradictory. 

Coleridge, in his Treatise upon Method, employs the word 
psychological, and apologizes for using an insolens veroam. 
" Goclenius is remarkable as the author of a work, the title of 
which is ipvxoKoyi'oi (Marburg, 1597). This I think the first 
appearance of psychology, under its own name, in modern 
philosophy. Goclenius had, as a pupil, Otto Casmann, who 
wrote Psychologies Anthropologica, sire animce humance cloctrina 
(Hanau, 1594)." — Cousin, Hist, of Mod. Philos., translated by 
Wright, vol. ii., p. 45. 

Psychology has been divided into two parts — 1. The empiri- 
cal, having for its object the phenomena of consciousness and 
the faculties by which they are produced. 2. The rational, 
having for its object the nature or substance of the soul, its 
spirituality, immutability, &c. 

Rational psychology, which had been chiefly prosecuted be- 
fore his day, was assailed by Kant, who maintained that apart 
from experience we can know nothing of the soul. But even 
admitting that psychology rests chiefly on observation and 
experience, we cannot well separate between phenomena and 
their cause, nor consider the cause apart from the phenomena. 
There are, however, three things to which the psychologist 
may successively attend. 1. To the phenomena of conscious- 
ness. 2. To the faculties to which they may be referred. 
3. To the Ego, that is, the soul or mind in its unity, individu- 
ality, and personality. These three things are inseparable ; 
and the consideration of them belongs to psychology. Sub- 
sidiary to it are inquiries concerning the mutual action and 
reaction of soul and body, the effect of organization, tempera- 
ment, age, health, disease, country, climate, &c. 

Xemesius, De Natura Hominis; Buchanan (David), Ilistoria 



414 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

PSYCHOLOGY- 

AnimcB Humance ; Casmannus, Psychologia ; Carus, History of 
Psychology, 8vo, Leipsig, 1808, in German. 

PSYCHOPAMYCHISM (A'Vffl, soul 5 and nSLv, all ; vv%, night 
— the sleep of the soul) is the doctrine to which Luther, 
among divines, and Formey, among philosophers, were inclined 
— that at death the soul falls asleep and does not awake till the 
resurrection of the body. 

pyrbqonism. — V. Scepticism, Academics. 



QUAimiviuus.— V. Tkivium. 

*|UAIjITY (prolog, KoioTYis, qualis, qualitas, suchness) is the differ- 
ence which distinguishes substances. 

" There may be substances devoid of quantity, such as the 
intellective and immaterial ; but that there should be sub- 
stances devoid of quality, is a thing hardly credible, because 
they could not then be characterized and distinguished from 
one another. 1 ' — Harris, Phil. Arrange., chap. 8. 

" Whatsoever the mind perceives in itself, or is the imme- 
diate object of perception, thought, or understanding, that I 
call idea ; and the power to produce any idea in our mind I 
call the quality of the subject wherein that power is." — Locke, 
Essay on Hum. Understand., book ii., chap. 8, sect. 8. 

" We understand by a quality that which truly constitutes 
the nature of a thing — what it is — what belongs to it per- 
manently, as an individual, or in common with others like it — 
not that which passes, which vanishes, and answers to no 
lasting judgment. A body falls : it is a fact, an accident : it 
is heavy, that is a quality. Every fact, every accident, every 
phenomenon, supposes a quality by which it is produced, or 
by which it is undergone : and reciprocally every quality of 
things which we know by experience manifests itself by certain 
modes or certain phenomena ; for it is precisely in this way 
that things discover themselves to us." — Diet, des Sciences 
Philosoph. 

Descartes (Princip. Philosoph., pars prima, sect. 56) says, — 
u Et hie quidem per modos plane idem iutelligimus, quod alibi 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 415 

QUALITY— - 

per attributa vel qualitates. Sed cum consider amus substantiam 
ab Mis affici, vel variari, vocamus modos ; cum ab ista variations 
talem posse denominare, vocamus qualitates ; ac denique, cum 
generalius spectamus tantum ea substantia? inesse, vocamus attri- 
buta. Ideoque in Deo non proprie modos aut qualitates sed 
attributa tantum esse dicimus, quia nulla in eo variatio estintelli- 
genda. Et etiam in rebus creatis, ea quce nunquam in Us diverso 
modo se habent, ut existenda et duratio in re existente et durante, 
non qualitates aut modi, sed attributa did debent" 

" As qualities help to distinguish not only one soul from an- 
other soul, and one body from another body, but (in a more 
general way) every soul from every body, it follows that qualities, 
by having this common reference to both, are naturally divided 
into corporeal and incorporeal?'' — Harris, Phil. Arrange., 
chap. 8. 

Hutcheson also (Metaphys., part i., cap. 5) reduces all quali- 
ties to two genera. Thought, — proper to mind. Motion, — 
proper to matter. 

Qualities are distinguished as essential, or such as are inse- 
parable from the substance — as thought from mind, or extension 
from matter ; and non-essential, or such as we can separate in 
conception from the substance — as passionateness or mildness 
from mind, or heat or cold from matter. 

" With respect to all kinds of qualities, there is one thing 
to be observed, that some degree of permanence is always 
requisite ; else they are not so properly qualities as incidental 
affections. Thus we call not a man passionate, because he has 
occasionally been angered, but because he is prone to frequent 
anger ; nor do we say a man is of a pallid or a ruddy com- 
plexion, because he is red by immediate exercise or pale by 
sudden fear, but when that paleness or redness may be called 
constitutional." — Harris, Phil. Arrange., chap. 8. 

On the question, historical and critical, as to the distinction 
of the qualities of matter as primary or secondary, see ReicTs 
Works, by Sir W. Hamilton, note D. 

" Another division of qualities is into natural and acquired. 
Thus in the mind, docility may be called a natural quality; 
science an acquired one : in the human body, beauty may be 



416 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

QUALITY— 

called a natural quality ; gentility (good carriage) an acquired 
one. This distinction descends even to bodies inanimate. To 
transmit objects of vision is a quality natural to crystal ; but to 
enlarge them while transmitted, is a character adventitious. 
Even the same quality may be natural in one substance, as 
attraction in the magnet ; and acquired in another, as the same 
attraction in the magnetic bar." — Harris, Phil. Arrange., 
chap. 8. — V. Attribute, Proposition. 
Quality (Occult). — " It was usual with the Peripatetics, when the 
cause of any phenomena was demanded, to have recourse 
to their faculties or occult qualities, and to say, for instance, 
that bread nourished by its nutritive faculty (quality) ; and 
senna purged by its purgative." — Hume, Dial, on Nat. Eelig., 
part iv. 

u Were I to make a division of the qualities of bodies as they 
appear to our senses, I would divide them first into those that 
are manifest, and those that are occult. The manifest qualities 
are those which Mr. Locke calls primary ; such as Extension, 
Figure, Divisibility, Motion, Hardness, Softness, Fluidity. The 
nature of these is manifest even to sense ; and the business of 
the philosopher with regard to them is not to find out their 
nature, which is well known, but to discover the effects pro- 
duced by their various combinations ; and, with regard to those 
of them which are not essential to matter, to discover their 
causes as far as he is able. 

11 The second class consists of occult qualities, which may be 
subdivided into various kinds; as first, the secondary qualities ; 
secondly, the disorders we feel in our own bodies ; and thirdly, 
all the qualities which we call powers of bodies, whether me- 
chanical, chemical, medical, animal, or vegetable ; or if there 
be any other powers not comprehended under these heads. Of 
all these the existence is manifest to sense, but the nature is 
occult; and here the philosopher has an ample field." — Reid, 
IntelL Pow., essay ii., chap. 18 ; Sir W. Hamilton, Discussions, 
p. 611. 

QUANTITY (ttogov, quantum, how much) is defined by mathe- 
maticians to be "that which admits of more or less." 

u Mathematics contain properly the doctrine of measure: 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 417 

QUANTITY— 

and the object of this science is commonly said to be quantity ; 
therefore, quantity ought to be defined, what may be measured. 
Those who have defined quantity to be whatever is capable of 
more or less, have given too wide a notion of it, which, it is 
apprehended, has led some persons to apply mathematical rea- 
soning to subjects that do not admit of it. Pain and pleasure 
admit of various degrees, but who can pretend to measure 
them ? " — Reid, Essay on Quantity. 

a According to the common definition, quantity is that which 
is susceptible- of augmentation or diminution. But many 
things susceptible of augmentation or diminution, and that 
even in a continuous manner, are not quantities. A sensation, 
painful or pleasing, augments or diminishes, and runs through 
different phases of intensity. But there is nothing in common 
between a sensation and quantity." — Diet, des Sciences Philosoph. 

" There are some quantities which may be called proper, 

and others improper That properly is quantity 

which is measured by its own kind; or which, of its own nature, 
is capable of being doubled or tripled, without taking in any 
quantity of a different kind as a measure of it. Improper quan- 
tity is that which cannot be measured by its own kind; but to 
which we assign a measure by the means of some proper 
quantity, that is related to it. Thus velocity of motion, when 
we consider it by itself, cannot be measured." We measure it 
by the space passed in a given time. — Reid, Essay on Quantity. 
Quantity (iMscrete and Continuous). — "In magnitude and 
multitude we behold the two primary, the two grand and com- 
prehensive species, into which the genus of quantity is divided ; 
magnitude, from its union, being called quantity continuous ; 
multitude, from its separation, quantity discrete. Of the con- 
tinuous kind is every solid ; also the bound of every solid ; that 
is, a superficies ; and the bound of every superficies, that is, a 
line ; to which may be added those two concomitants of every 
body, namely, time and place. Of the discrete kind are fleets 
and armies, herds, flocks, the syllables of sounds articulate, 
&c." — Harris, Phil. Arrange., chap. 9. 

" Discrete quantity is that of which the parts have no con- 
tinuity, as in number. The number, e. g., of inches in a loot 
2e 



418 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

QUANTITY— 

rule, is the same whether the solid inches remain continuous, 
or are cut asunder and flung about the world ; but they do not 
constitute a foot length (which is a continuous quantity), unless 
they are so joined together that the bounding lines of one 
coincide with those of another. Of continuous quantities there 
are two kinds ; one, of which the parts are co-existent, as in 
extension ; another, in which the parts are successive, as in dura- 
tion. Discrete and continuous quantities are sometimes called 
multitude and magnitude. 11 — Fitzgerald, Notes to Aristotle's 
i^'cs, 8 vo, Dublin, 1850, p. 151. — See Aristotle in Categor., c. 6. 

According to Derodon (Phys., pars 1, cap. 5) quantity is 
either — 1. Permanent, when its parts are together ; or 2. Suc- 
cessive, when they exist some after others. Time and motion 
are quantity successive. Permanent quantity is — 1. Continuous, 
as a line which is length ; superficies, which is length and 
breadth ; and mathematical body, which is length, breadth, and 
depth. 2. Discrete, as number and speech. 

Hutcheson notices magnitude, time, and number, as three 
genera of quantity. — Metaphys., part i., cap. 5. 

Quantity is called discrete when the parts are not connected, 
as number ; continuous, when they are connected, and then it 
is either successive, as time, motion ; or permanent, which is 
what is otherwise called space or extension, in length, breadth, 
and depth ; length alone constitutes lines ; length and breadth, 
surfaces ; and the three together, solids. — Port Roy. Log., part 
i., ch. 2. — V. Proposition. 
QUIDDITY or QUIDITY (quidditas, from quid, what). — This 
term was employed in scholastic philosophy as equivalent to 
the to ri vjv ihui of Aristotle, and denotes what was subse- 
quently called the substantial form. It is the answer to the 
question, What is it ? quid est ? It is that which distinguishes 
a thing from other things, and makes it what it is, and not 
another. It is synonymous with essence, and comprehends 
both the substance and qualities. For qualities belong to sub- 
stance, and by qualities substance manifests itself. It is the 
known essence of a thing ; or the complement of all that makes 
us conceive of anything as we conceive of it, as different from 
any or every other thing. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 119 

QUIETISM (quies, rest) " is tlie doctrine that the highest character 
of virtue consists in the perpetual contemplation and love of 
supreme excellence." — Sumner, Records of Creation, vol. ii., 
p. 239. 

The two following propositions from Fenelon's Maxims of the 
Saints, were condemned by Innocent XII. in 1699. 1. There 
is attainable in this life a state of perfection in which the ex- 
pectation of reward, and the fear of punishment have no place. 
2. Souls may be so inflamed with love to God, and so resigned 
to his will, that if they believed that God had condemned them 
to eternal pain, they would absolutely sacrifice their salvation. 

Madame Guyon thought she had learned a method by which 
souls might be carried to such a state of perfection that a con- 
tinual act of contemplation and love might be substituted for 
all other acts of religion. 

A controversy was carried on by Fenelon and Bossuet on 
the subject. See a dissertation by M. Bonnel, De la Contro- 
versy de Bossuet et Fenelon, sur le Quietisme, 8vo, Macon, 1850 ; 
Upham, Life of Madame Guyon. 



race — V. Species. 

RATIO. — When two subjects admit of comparison with reference 
to some quality which they possess in common, and which may 
be measured, this measure is their ratio, or the rate in vhicli 
the one exceeds the other. With this term is connected that 
of proportion, which denotes the portions, or parts of one 
magnitude which are contained in another. In mathematics, 
the term ratio is used fox proportion; thus, instead of the pro- 
portion which one thing bears to another, we say, the ratio which 
one bears to the other, meaning its comparative magnitude. 

In the following passage ratio is used for reason or caust . 
1 c In this consists the ratio and essential ground of the gospel 
doctrine." — Waterland, Works, vol. ix., serm. i. — V. Reason". 

RATIOCINATION.—' 1 The conjunction of images with affirma- 
tions and negations, which make up propositions, and the 
conjunction of propositions one to another, and illation of con- 
clusions upon them, is ratiocination or discourse. 



420 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

RATIOCINATION— 

" Some consecutions are so intimately and evidently con- 
nexed to, or found in, the premises, that the conclusion is 
attained quasi per saltum, and without anything of ratiocinative 
process, and as the eye sees its objects immediately and 
without any previous discourse." — Hale, Prim, Orig. of Man- 
kind, pp. 50, 51. 

" The schoolmen make a third act of the mind which they 
call ratiocination, and we may style it the generation of a 
judgment from others actually in our understanding." — Tucker, 
Light of Nature, vol. i., part i., c. 11, sect. 13. 

"When from a general proposition, by combining it with 
other propositions, we infer a proposition of the same degree 
of generality with itself, or a less general proposition, or a 
proposition merely individual, the process is ratiocination (or 
syllogism)." — Mill, Log., 2d edit., vol. i., p. 223. — V. Reason- 
ing. 
RATIONALE. — u The chairs of theology and philosophy (during 
the scholastic ages) were the oracular seats, from which the 
doctrines of Aristotle were expounded, as the rationale of 
theological and moral truth." — Hampden, On Scholastic Philo- 
sophy, lect. i., p. 9. 

a There cannot be a body of rules without a rationale, and 
this rationale constitutes the science. There were poets before 
there were rules of poetical composition ; but before Aristotle, 
or Horace, or Boileau, or Pope could write their arts of poetry 
and criticism, they had considered the reasons on which their 
precepts rested, they had conceived in their own minds a theory 
of the art. In like manner there were navigators before there 
was an art of navigation ; but before the art of navigation could 
teach the methods of finding the ship's place by observations 
of the heavenly bodies, the science of astronomy must have 
explained the system of the world." — Sir G. C. Lewis, Method 
of Observ. in Politics, chap. 19, sect. 2. 

Anthony Sparrow, bishop of Exeter, is the author of a work 

entitled, A Rationale upon the Book of Common Prayer, 12mo, 

Lond., 1668.— V. Science, Art. 

RATIONALISM, in philosophy, is opposed to sensualism, sensuism, 

or sensism, according to all which, all our knowledge is derived 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 421 

RATIONAMSiTI— 

from sense. It is also opposed to empiricism, which refers all 
our knowledge to sensation and reflection, or experience. 
According to rationalism, reason furnishes certain elements, 
without which experience is not possible. The philosophy of 
Condillac is of the former kind, — that of Rover Collard of the 
latter. The philosophy of Locke and Eeid have been contrasted 
in the same manner, but not quite correctly. — V. Sexsism, 
Sexsuism, Sensualism. 

KATlONALlatfl, in religion, as opposed to super naturalism, means 
the adoption of reason as our sufficient and only guide, exclu- 
sive of tradition and revelation. Spinoza, in his Tractatus 
Theologico-Politicus, tried to explain all that is supernatural 
in religion by reason. And Strauss and others in modern 
Germany have carried this line of speculation much farther. 

RATIONALISTS. — " The empirical philosophers are like pismires ; 
they only lay up and use then* store. The rationalists are like 
the spiders ; they spin all out of their own bowels. But give 
me a philosopher, who, like the bee, hath a middle faculty, 
gathering from abroad, but digesting that which is gathered by 
his own virtue." — Bacon, Apophthegms. 

REAJL (The). — M There is no arguing from ideal to real existence, 
unless it could first be shown, that such ideas must have their 
objective realities, and cannot be accounted for, as they pass 
within, except it be by supposing such and such real exis- 
tences, ad extra, to answer them." — Waterland, Works, vol. 
iv., p. 435. 

The term real always imports the existent. It is used — 

1. As denoting the existent, as opposed to the non-existent, 
something, as opposed to nothing. 

2. As opposed to the nominal or verbal, the thing to the name. 

3. As synonymous with actual, and thus opposed — 1. To 
potential, and 2. To possible, existence. 

4. As denoting the absolute in opposition to ike phenomenal, 
things in themselves in opposition to things as they appear to 
us, relatively to our faculties. 

5. As indicating a subsistence in nature in opposition to a 
representation in thought, ens reale, as opposed to ens rationis. 

6. As opposed to logical or rational, a thing which in 



422 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

REAL-* 

or really, re, is one, may logically, ratione, be considered as 
diverse or plural, and vice versa. — Sir William Hamilton, 
Reid's Works, note b. — V. Virtual. 

REAT/igui, as opposed to idealism, is the doctrine that in per- 
ception there is an immediate or intuitive cognition of the 
external object, while according to idealism our knowledge of 
an external world is mediate and representative, i. e., by means 
of ideas. — V. Idea, and Idealism. — Sir Will. Hamilton, 
ReioVs Works, note c ; Edin. Rev., vol. lii., pp. 175-181. 

REAI/ISM, as opposed to nominalism, is the doctrine that genus 
and species are real things, existing independently of our con- 
ceptions and expressions ; and that as in the case of singular 
terms, there is some real individual corresponding to each, so, 
in common terms also, there is something corresponding to 
each ; which is the object of our thoughts, when we employ 
the term. — Whately, Log., book iv., ch. 5, § 1. 

Cousin has said that the Middle Age is but a development 
of a phrase of Porphyry (Isagoge, ch. 1), which has been thus 
translated by Boethius — Mox de generibus et speciebus illud 
quidem sive suhsistant, sive in solis nudis intellections posita sint^ 
sive subsistantia corporalia sint an incorporalia, et utrum sepa- 
rata a sensibilibus an in sensibilibus posita et citra lime consis- 
tentia, dicere recusabo. — V. Conceptualism, Nominalism. — 
See Chretien, Log. Meth., ch. 3; Thomson, Outline of Laws 
of Thought, part i., sect. 23. 

REASON (Ratio, from reor, to think). — u The word reason in the 

English language has different significations ; sometimes it is 

taken for true and clear principles ; sometimes for clear and 

fair deductions from these principles ; and sometimes for the 

cause, and particularly the final cause. But the consideration 

I shall have of it here is in a signification different from all 

these ; and that is, as it stands for a faculty in man, that 

faculty whereby man is supposed to be distinguished from 

beasts,* and wherein it is evident he much surpasses them." — 

Locke, Essay on Hum. Understand., book iv., chap. 17. 

* La Raison, dans sa definition la pins simple, est la faculte de comprendre, qu'il 
ne faut pas a confondre avec la faculte de connaitre. En effet les animaux cormaissent, 
ils ne paraissent pas comprendre, et e'est la qui les distingue de l'homme.— Jouffroy, 
Droit. Nat n torn, i., p. 38. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 423 

REASON- 

" All the operations of the mind when it thinks of the 
qualities of things separately from the things to which they 
belong ; or when it forms general notions, and employs gene- 
ral terms ; or when it judges of the agreement or disagree- 
ment of different things ; or when it draws inferences ; are 
comprehended under the term reason. Reason seems chiefly 
to consist in the power to keep such or such thoughts in the 
mind ; and to change them at pleasure ; instead of their flow- 
ing through the mind as in dreams ; also in the power to see 
the difference between one thought and another, and so com- 
pare, separate, or join them together afresh. Though animals 
seem to have some little power to perform these operations, 
man has so much more of it, that he alone is said to be 
endowed with reason." — Taylor, Elements of Thought. 

u This word is used to signify — 1. All the intellectual powers 
collectively. 2. Those intellectual powers exclusively in which 
man differs from brutes. 3. The faculty of carrying on the 
operation of reasoning. 4. The premiss or premises of an 
argument, especially the minor premiss ; and it is from reason 
in this sense that the word reasoning is derived. 5. A cause, 
as when we say that the reason of an eclipse of the sun is,* 
that the moon is interposed between it and the earth." — 
Whately, Log., Appendix i. 

" In common and popular discourse, reason denotes that 
power by which we distinguish truth from falsehood, and right 
from wrong ; and by which we are enabled to combine means 
for the attainment of particular ends." — Stewart, Elements. 
vol. ii., chap. 1. 

" Reason is used sometimes to express the whole of those 
powers which elevate man above the brutes, and constitute 
his rational nature, more especially, perhaps, his intellectual 
powers ; sometimes to express the power of deduction 
or argumentation." — Stewart, Outlines, part ii., chap. 1, 
sect. 6. 

Considering it as a word denoting a faculty or complement 

* The idea of the reason is higher than that of cause. The ground or reason of all 
existence, actual or possible, is the existence of God. Had He not existed, nothing 
could ever have existed. But God is the cause only of such things as He has created in 
time ; while he is the ground or reason of everything possible. 



424 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

REASON— 

of faculties, Sir W. Hamilton, ReicPs Works, note A, sect. 5, 
says, u Reason has been employed to denote — 

" 1. Our intelligent nature in general, as distinguished from 
the lower cognitive faculties, as sense, imagination, and me- 
mory; and in contrast to the feelings and desires, including 
— 1. Conception; 2. Judgment; 3. Reasoning; 4. Intelli- 
gence ; vovs. 

" 2. The right and regular use of our rational faculties. 

u 3. The dianoetic and noetic functions of reason, as by 
Reid, Intell. Pow., essay vi., chap. 2. 

" 4. The dianoetic function or ratiocination, as by Reid in 
his Inquiry, Introd., sect. 3, chap. 2, sect. 5 and 7. 

" 5. The noetic function or common sense. And by Kant 
and others opposed to the understanding as comprehending 
the other functions of thought." 
REASON (Spontaneity of). — " I call spontaneity of reason, the 
development of reason anterior to reflection, the power which 
reason has to seize at first upon truth, to comprehend it and 
to admit it, without demanding and rendering to itself an 
account of it." — Cousin, Hist, of Mod. PJiilos., vol. i., p. 113. 
REASON ANI> UNDERSTANDINO.— a Pure reason or intuition 
holds a similar relation to the understanding that perception 
holds to sensation. As sensation reveals only subjective facts, 
while perception involves a direct intuition of the objective 
world around us ; so with regard to higher truths and laws, 
the understanding furnishes merely the subjective forms, in 
which they may be logically stated, while intuition brings us 
face to face with the actual matter, or reality of truth itself." 
— Morell, Pliilos. of Relig., p. 19. 

u The faculty of thought manifests itself both as understanding 
and reason. By the understanding we inquire after and inves- 
tigate the grounds, causes, and conditions of our representa- 
tions, feelings, and desires, and of those objects standing in 
immediate connection with them ; by reason we inquire after 
ultimate grounds, causes, and conditions. By the understanding 
we evolve rules for the regulation of our desiring faculty ; by 
reason we subordinate these rules to a higher law, to a law 
which determines the unconditioned form, the highest end of 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 425 

REASON— 

acting. Through the power of thought, therefore, our know- 
ledge, both theoretical and practical, is comprehended in unity, 
connection, and in being." — Tennenian, Grundriss, sect. 41. 

" By the understanding, I mean the faculty of thinking and 
forming judgments on the notices furnished by the sense, accord- 
ing to certain rules existing in itself, which rules constitute its 
distinct nature. By the pure reason, I mean the power by 
which we become possessed of principles (the eternal verities 
of Plato and Descartes) and of ideas (n. b., not images), as the 
ideas of a point, a line, a circle, in mathematics ; and of justice, 
holiness, free-will, &c, in morals. Hence in works of pure 
science, the definitions of necessity precede the reasoning ; in 
other works they more aptly form the conclusion." — Coleridge, 
Friend, pp. 150, 151. 

" The definition and proper character of man — that, namely, 
which should contradistinguish him from other animals, is to 
be taken from his reason rather than his understanding ; in 
regard that in other creatures there may be something of 
understanding, but there is nothing of reason." — Harrington, 
quoted in Aids to Reflection, vol. i., p. 162. 

In the philosophy of Kant the understanding is distinguished 
from the reason — 

1. By the sphere of their action. The sphere of the under- 
standing is coincident with the sensible world, and cannot tran- 
scend it ; but the reason ascends to the super-sensuous. 

2. By the objects and results of their exercise. The under- 
standing deals with conceptions, the reason with ideas. The 
knowledge obtained by the understanding is particular and con- 
tingent, the product of the reason is necessary and universal 
knowledge or truth. 

Grit, of Pure Reason, see English translat., pp. 7, 20, 57, 
268, 7, 277, Prolegomena, sect. 59. See also Morell, Philos. 
of Relig., chap. 2 ; and Philos. Tendencies, p. 71 ; Coleridge, 
Aids to Reflection. 

" The faculty which combines the simple perceptions, and so 
gives the knowledge of the complex objects, 1ms boon called 
the understanding. It is an energy of the mind as intelligent. 
It is an ultimate fact of knowledge, that the mind is conscious 



426 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

of itself as unity, of the world as diversity. The outward 
world is seen as diverse through the various sensations, but is 
bound in certain relations — those of space — which are inde- 
pendent of the perceiving subject. The mind requires a cause 
external to itself, of the constant representation of unity in 
diversity, no less than of the representation of different quali- 
ties. The reason, therefore, in virtue of its causal principle, 
refers these relations to the object. Precisely as the intelli- 
gence refers the single perception to an external cause, so it 
refers the combination of perceptions to one object. The under- 
standing is thus the same faculty with the reason, but in certain 
particular applications." — R. A. Thomson, Christian Theism , 
book L, chap. 3. 

" The assertion of a faculty of the mind by which it appre- 
hends truth, which faculty is higher than the discursive reason, 
as the truth apprehended by it is higher than mere demon- 
strative truth, agrees with the doctrine taught and insisted on 
by the late Samuel Taylor Coleridge. And so far as he was 
the means of inculcating this doctrine, which is the doctrine of 
Plato, and, I might add, of Aristotle, and of many other philo- 
sophers, let him have due honour. But in his desire to impress 
the doctrine upon men's minds, he combined it with several 
other tenets, which will not bear examination. He held that 
the two faculties by which these two kinds of truth are appre- 
hended, and which our philosophical writers call the intuitive 
reason, and the discursive reason, may be called, and ought to 
be called respectively, the reason and the understanding ; and 
that the second of these is of the nature of the instinct of 
animals, so as to be something intermediate between reason 
and instinct. These opinions, I may venture to say, are alto- 
gether erroneous. The intuitive reason and the discursive 
reason are not, by any English writers, called the reason and 
the understanding ; and accordingly, Coleridge has had to alter 
all the passages, viz., those taken from Leighton, Harrington, 
and Bacon, from which his exposition proceeds. The under- 
standing is so far from being especially the discursive or reason- 
ing faculty, that it is, in universal usage, and by our best 
writers, opposed to the discursive or reasoning faculty. Thus 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 427 

REASON— 

this is expressly declared by Sir John Davies in his poem 
c On the Immortality of the Soul.' He says of the soul : — 

1 When she rates things, and moves from ground to ground, 

The name of reason {ratio) she acquires from this; 
But when by reason she the truth hath found, 
And standeth fist, she understanding is: 

••Instead of the reason being fixed, and the understanding 
discursive, as Mr. Coleridge says, the reason is distinctively 
discursive ; that is, it obtains conclusions by running from one 
point to another. This is what is meant by discursus ; or, 
taking the full term, discursus rationis, discourse of reason. 
Understanding is fixed, that is, it dwells upon one view of a 
subject, and not upon the steps by which that view is obtained. 
The verb to reason implies the substantive, the reason, though 
it is not co-extensive with it ; for, as I have said, there is 
the intuitive reason as well as the discursive reason. But it is 
by the faculty of reason that we are capable of reasoning ; 
though undoubtedly the practice or the pretence of reasoning 
may be carried so far as to seem at variance with reason in the 
more familiar sense of the term ; as is the case also in French. 
. . Moliere's Crisale says (in the Femmes Savantes) — 

4 Raisonner est l'emploi de toute ma maison 
Et le raisonnement en bannit la Raison.' 

"If Mr. Coleridge's assertion were true that the understand- 
ing is the discursive and the reason the fixed faculty, we should 
be justified in saying that the understanding is the faculty by 
which ice reason, and the reason is tlie faculty by which we under- 
stand. But this is not so. 

"Mr. Coleridge's object in his speculations is nearly the 
same as Plato's, viz., to declare that there is a truth of a higher 
kind than can be obtained by mere reasoning; and also to 
claim, as portions of this higher truth, certain fundamental 
doctrines of morality. Among these Mr. Coleridge places the 
authority of conscience, and Plato the supreme good. Mr. 
Coleridge also holds, as Plato held, that the reason of man in 
its highest and most comprehensive form, is a portion of a 
supreme and universal reason ; and leads to truth, not in virtue 
of its special attributes in each person, but by its own nature. 



428 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 



KEASON- 

4 ' The view thus given of that higher kind of knowledge 
which Plato and Aristotle place above ordinary science, as 
being the knowledge of and faculty of learning first principles, 
will enable us to explain some expressions which might other- 
wise be misunderstood. Socrates, in the concluding part of 
the Sixth Book of the Republic, says, that this kind of know- 
ledge is ' that of which the reason (7i6yos) takes hold,* in virtue 
of its power of reasoning.' Here we are plainly not to under- 
stand that we arrive at first principles by reasoning; for the very 
opposite is true, and is here taught, viz., that first principles 
are not what we reason to, but what we reason from. The 
meaning of this passage plainly is, that first principles are those 
of which the reason takes hold in virtue of its power of reason- 
ing ; they are the conditions which must exist in order to make 
any reasoning possible ; they are the propositions which the 
reason must involve implicitly, in order that we may reason 
explicitly ; they are the intuitive roots of the dialectical power. 
" Plato's views may be thus exhibited : — 





Intelligible World, vonrov. 


Visible World, ogczrov. 


Object,.... 


Ideas. 

toBO&f. 


Conceptions. 
hdvoicc. 


Things. 
Zjua, x.r.k. 


Images. 

UXOViC. 


Process, . . 


Intuition. 
vontr.;. 


Demonstration. 
i<zr tarn [An* 


Belief. 


Conjecture. 

ilKCCff.X, 


Faculties,. 


Intuitive 

Reason. 

vovg. 


Discursive 
Reason. 

Xoyo$. 


Sensation. 
ui<r0no'is. 



From a paper by Dr. Whewell, On the Intellectual Powers 
according to Plato, in the Cambridge Philos. Trans., 1855. — 
V. Understanding. 
Reason (impersoiaal). — Reason, according to Cousin and other 
French philosophers, is the faculty by which we have knowledge 
of the infinite and the absolute, and is impersonal. 

u Licet enim iniellectus meus sit individuus et separatus ah 
intellectu tuo, tamen secundum quod est individuus non habet 

* -r/j rod hiaXsyitrOtzi hvvcifAii. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 429 

BEASON- 

universale in ipso, et ideo non individuatur id quod est in Intel- 

lectu. . . . Sic igitur universale ut universale est ubique et 

semper idem omnino et idem in animabus omnium, non recipiens 

individuationem ab anima" 

These words are quoted from Averrhoes, by Moris. Haureau, 

in his Examen de la PJiilos. Scolastique, torn, i., p. 69, who 

exclaims. u Yoila la these de l'intelligence ou de la raison 

impersonelle !" But the truth is, that the root and germ of 

this doctrine may be found in the doctrine of Plato, that human 

reason is a ray of the Divine reason. 

" He the great Father I kindled at one flame 
The world as rational— one spirit pour'd 
From spirit's awful fountain, poured Himself 
Through all their souls, but not in equal stream : 
Profuse or frugal of the inspiring God, 
As His wise plan demanded ; and when past 
Their various trials in their common spheres 
(If they continue rational as made) 
Resorbs them all into himself again, 
His throne their centre, and His smile their crown."— Young. 

"In truth," observes Fenelon, "my reason is in myself, for 
it is necessary that I should continually turn inward upon my- 
self in order to find it ; but the higher reason which corrects me 
when I need it, and which I consult, is not my own, it does not 
specially make a part of myself. Thus, that which may seem 
most our own, and to be the foundation of our being, I mean 
our reason, is that which we are to believe most borrowed. 
We receive at every moment a reason superior to our own, 
just as we breathe an air which is not ourselves. There is an 
internal school, where man receives what he can neither acquire 
outwardly for himself, nor learn of other men who live by alms 
like himself." — Existence of God, chap, iv., sect. 3. 

M While we reflect on our own idea of reason, we know that 
our souls are not it, but only partake of it ; and that we have 
it jlcltoL ftefaZtv, and not xccroi ovaiw. Neither can it be called 
a faculty, but rather a light, which we enjoy, but the source of 
which is not in ourselves, nor rightly by any individual to be 
denominated mine" — John Smith, Posthumous Tracts, 1660. 
See Coleridge, Liter. Bern., vol. hi., p. 464. 

"Reason is impersonal in its nature," says Cousin (Expos. 



430 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

REASON— 

of Eclecticism, translated by Ripley, p. 69), "it is not we who 
make it. It is so far from being individual, that its peculiar 
characteristics are the opposite of individuality, viz., univer- 
sality and necessity; since it is to reason that we owe the 
knowledge of universal and necessary truths, of principles 
which we all obey and cannot but obey." . . . . "It 
descends from God and approaches man ; it makes its appear- 
ance in the consciousness as a guest who brings intelligence of 
an unknown world, of which it at once presents the idea and 
awakens the want. If reason were personal it would have no 
value, no authority beyond the limits of the individual subject. 
. . . . Reason is a revelation, a necessary and universal 
revelation which is wanting to no man, and which enlightens 
every man on his coming into the world. Reason is the neces- 
sary mediator between God and man, the Koyo$ of Pythagoras 
and Plato, the Word made flesh, which serves as the interpreter 
of God, and the teacher of man, divine and human at the same 
time. It is not, indeed, the absolute God in his majestic indi- 
viduality, but his manifestation in spirit and in truth ; it is not 
the Being of beings, but it is the revealed God of the human 
race." — Ibid, p. 79. 

" Reason or intelligence is not individual, is not ours, is not 
even human ; it is absolute, it is divine. What is personal to 
us is our free and voluntary activity ; what is not free and not 
voluntary is adventitious to man, and does not constitute 
an integrant part of his individuality. Intelligence is conver- 
sant with truth ; truth as necessary and universal is not the 
creature of my volition ; and reason, which, as the subject of 
truth is also universal and necessary, is consequently imper- 
sonal. We see, therefore, by a light which is not ours ; and 
reason is a revelation of God in man. The ideas of which we 
are conscious belong not to us, but to absolute intelligence." — ■ 
Sir Will. Hamilton, Discussions, &c, 8vo, Lond., 1852, p. 8, 
giving the views of Cousin. 

This doctrine of the impersonal reason is regarded by 
Bouillier ( Theorie de la Raison impersonelle, 8vo, Paris, 1846) 
and others as the true ground of all certainty. Admit the 
personality of reason and man becomes the measure of all 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 431 

REASON— 

things — truth is individual. But the truths of reason are 
universal. ^No one, says Malebranche, can feel the pain which 
I feel ; but any one or every one can contemplate the truth 
which I know. The scepticism of Kant, as to the relative 
nature of our knowledge, is thus demolished. 
REASON (Determining or Sufficient). — t; There are two great 
principles of reasoning: the one is the principle of contradic- 
tion, which means that of two contradictory propositions, the 
one is true, the other false : the other is the principle of raison 
deter minante, which is that nothing happens without a cause, 
or at least a reason determining, that is, something which may 
serve to render a reason a priori, why that thing is as it is 
rather than otherwise." — Leibnitz, Theodicee, partie 1, sect. 44. 

" Nothing is done without a sufficient reason, that is, nothing 
happens without its being possible to him who knew things 
sufficiently to render a reason which is sufficient to determine 
why it is so, and not otherwise." — Leibnitz, Principes de la Xat. 
et de la Grace, sect. 7. — V. Sufficient Reason. 
REASONING, " in one of its acceptations, means syllogising, 
or the mode of inference which may be called concluding from 
generals to particulars. In another of its senses, to reason is 
simply to infer any assertion, from assertions already admitted : 
and in this sense induction is as much entitled to be called 
reasoning as the demonstrations of geometry. Writers on Logic 
have generally preferred the former acceptation of the term : 
the latter and more extensive signification is that in which I 
mean to use it." — Mill, Log., 2d edit., vol. L, p. 3. 

u Reasoning is that operation of the mind through which it 
forms one judgment from many others ; as when, for instance, 
having judged that true virtue ought to be referred to God, 
and that the virtue of the heathens was not referred to him, 
we thence conclude that the virtue of the heathens was not true 
virtue." — Port Roy. Log. 

u Some appear to include under the title of reasoning every 
case in which a person believes one thing in consequence of 
his believing another thing, however far he may be from having 
any grounds to warrant the inference : and they accordingly 
include those processes which take place in the minds of infants 



432 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

REASOIVINO— 

and of brutes ; which are apt to associate with the appearance 
of an object before them the remembered impression of some- 
thing that formerly accompanied it. Such a process is attended 
to in the familiar proverbs that 4 a burnt child dreads the fire;' 
| or as it is expressed in another form, ' the scalded cat fears 
cold water ;' or again in the Hebrew proverb, l he who has 
been bitten by a serpent is afraid of a rope,' Most logical 
writers, however, have confined the name of reasoning to valid 
argument ; which cannot exist without a universal premiss, 
implied, if not expressed." — Whately, Log., Introd. 4. 

Mr. Stewart says that to adapt means to a proximate end is 
to reason. 

RECOI.L.ECTION. — V. REMEMBRANCE. 

RECTITUDE. — "Rectitude of conduct is intended to express 
the term xurogQatris, which Cicero translates recta effectio : 
Kciro^dcjf^ot he translates rectum factum, De Fin., lib. iii., cap. 
4. Now the definition of jcaro^od^ct was uo/uov TrgoaTctypcct, 
fc A thing commanded by law ' (that is, by the law of nature, 
the universal law). Antoninus, speaking of the reasoning 
faculty, how, without looking farther, it rests contented in its 
own energies, adds, ' for which reason are all actions of this 
species called rectitudes (Karotfaaus, ^uto. 6p@6s, right onwards), 
as denoting the directness of their progression right onwards." 
— Harris, Dialogue on Happiness, p. 73, note. 

"Goodness in actions is like unto straightness ; wherefore 
that which is done well we term right, for as the straight way 
is most acceptable to him that travelleth, because by it he 
cometh soonest to his journey's end : so in action, that which 
doth lye the evenest between us and the end we desire, must 
needs be the fittest for our use."— Hooker, Eccles. Pol., b. i., 
s. 8. 

If a term is to be selected to denote that in action and in 
disposition of which the Moral Faculty approves, perhaps the 
most precise and appropriate is rectitude or rightness. Dr. 
Adams has remarked (Sermon on the Nature and Obligation of 
Virtue), " The man who acts virtuously is said to act rightly. 
This appears more proper than to say that he acts according 
to truth ; and more clear and distinct than to say that he acts 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 433 

RECTITUDE— 

according to the nature and reason of tilings ; the meaning of 
which will, in all cases, be found to be only this — that he 
acts according to what reason, in the present circumstances 
of the agent, and the relation he stands in to the objects 
before him, pronounces to be right." In like manner, Dr. 
Eeid has said {Act. Pow., essay v., chap. 5), "Prudence is a 
virtue, benevolence is a virtue ; but the essence and formal 
nature of virtue must lie in something that is common to all 
these, and to every other virtue. And this, I conceive, can be 
nothing else but the rectitude of such conduct and turpitude of the 
contrary, which is discerned by a good man. And so far only 
he is virtuous as he pursues the former and avoids the latter.' 1 
Rectitude, then, is that in action and in disposition of which 
the moral faculty approves. The contrary of what is right is 
wrong. Rightness and wrongness, then, are the characteristics 
of action and disposition, as contemplated by the moralist. So 
that the foundation of morals, the ground upon which moral 
distinctions are taken, is in the essential difference between 
what is right and what is wrong. 

" There are other phrases which have been used, which I see 
no reason for adopting, such as, acting contrary to the relations 
of things — contrary to the reason of things — to the fitness of 
things — to the truth of things — to absolute fitness. These phrases 
have not the authority of common use, which, in matters of 
language, is great. They seem to have been invented by 
some authors with a view to explain the nature of vice ; but 
I do not think they answer that end. If intended as defi- 
nitions of vice, they are improper ; because, in the most favour- 
able sense they can bear, they extend to every kind of foolish 
and absurd conduct, as well as to that which is vicious." — 
Reid, Act. Pow., essay v., ch. 7. 

But what is rectitude or rightness as the characteristic of an 
action ? According to Price and others, this term denotes a 
simple and primitive idea, and cannot be explained. It might 
as well be asked, what is truth, as the characteristic of a pro- 
position ? It is a capacity of our rational nature to see and 
acknowledge truth ; but we cannot define what truth is. We 
call it the conformity of our thoughts with the reality of things. 
2f 



434 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

RECTITUDE — 

But it may be doubted how far this explanation makes the 
nature of truth more intelligible. In like manner, some ex- 
plain rectitude by saying that it consists in a congruity between 
an action and the relations of the agent. It is the idea we 
form of an action, when it is, in every way, conformable to the 
relations of the agent and the circumstances in which he is 
placed. On contemplating such an action, we approve of it, 
and feel that if we were placed in such circumstances, and in 
such relations, we should be under an obligation to perform it. 
Now, the circumstances and relations in which man is placed 
arise from his nature and from the nature of things in general : 
and hence it has been said, that rectitude is founded in the na- 
ture and fitness of things ; that is, an action is right when it is 
fit or suitable to all the relations and circumstances of the 
agent ; and of this fitness conscience or reason is the judge. 
Conscience or reason does not constitute the relations ; these 
must arise from the nature of man and the nature of things ; 
but conscience or reason judges and determines as to the con- 
formity of actions to these relations ; and these relations 
arising necessarily from the very nature of things, the con- 
formity with them which constitutes rectitude^ is said to be 
eternal and immuiuble. — V. Right. 

REDINTEGRATION, — V. TRAIN OF THOUGHT. 

REDUCTION IN JL.OGIC. — The first figure of syllogism is called 
perfect ; because, 1. It proceeds directly on the Dictum, and, 
2. It arranges the terms in the most natural order. All argu- 
ments may be, in one way or other, brought into some one 
of the four moods in the first figure : and a syllogism is, in that 
case, said to be reduced (i. e., to the first figure). These four 
are called the perfect moods, and all the rest imperfect. The 
mood to be reduced is called the reducend, and that to which 
it is reduced the reduct. Reduction is of two kinds. 1. Direct 
or ostensive, which consists in bringing the premisses of the 
reducend to a corresponding mood in the first figure, by trans- 
position or conversion of the premisses, and from the premisses 
thus changed deducing either the original conclusion, or one 
from which it follows by conversion. 2. Indirect, or reductio 
per impossibile or ad absurdum f by which we prove (in the first 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 435 

REDUCTION— 

figure) not, directly, that the original conclusion is true, but 
that it cannot be false ; i. e., that an absurdity would follow 
from the supposition of its being false. — Whately, Log., b. ii., 
ch. 3, $§ 5, 6. 

REFI/ECTION (reflecto, to bend back). — " By reflection I would 
be understood to mean that notice which the mind takes of its 
own operations, and the manner of them ; by reason whereof 
there come to be ideas of these operations in the understanding. 
Those two, viz., — external material things, as the objects of 
sensation ; and the operations of our own minds within, as the 
objects of reflection, are to me the only originals from whence 
all our ideas take their beginnings. The term operations here 
I use in a large sense, as comprehending not barely the actions 
of the mind about its ideas, but some sort of passions arising 
sometimes from them, such as in the satisfaction or uneasiness 
arising from any thought." — Locke, Essay on Hum. Understand., 
book ii., chap. 1. 

" When we make our own thoughts and passions, and the 
various operations of our minds, the objects of our atten- 
tion, either while they are present, or when they are recent 
and fresh in our memory, this act of the mind is called reflec- 
tion." — Reid, Intell. Pow., essay i., chap. 2. Also chap. 5, and 
essay vi. 

He gives a more extensive (but less proper) signification 
to reflection. — < Intell. Pow., essay iii., chap. 5. Also essay vi., 
ehap. 1. 

Attention is the energy of the mind directed towards things 
present. Reflection has to do with things past and the ideas of 
them. Attention may employ the organs of the body. Reflec- 
tion is purely a mental operation. It is not a simple act. 
In reflection we may analyze and compound, abstract and 
generalize. These operations of mind so arranged as to gain 
some end, constitute a method. And a method is just the act 
of reflecting or properly employing the energies of the mind on 
the objects of its knowledge. 

" Reflection creates nothing — can create nothing ; ever} thing 
exists previous to reflection in the consciousness, but ever) thing 
pre-exists there in confusion and obscurity ; it is the work oi 



436 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

REFLECTION— 

reflection in adding itself to consciousness, to illuminate that 
which was obscure, to develop that which was enveloped. 
Pieflection is for consciousness what the microscope and the tele- 
scope are for the natural sight : neither of these instruments 
makes or changes the objects ; but in examining them on every 
side, in penetrating to their centre, these instruments illumi- 
nate them, and discover to us their characters and their laws." 
— Cousin, Hist, of Mod. Phil., vol. i., p. 275. — V. Observa- 
tion, Speculation. 

KEFLEX SENSES. — V. SENSE, Idea. 

REGULATIVE (German, Regulativ) does not a priori determine 
how something must be or is to be, but how something must 
be sought. — V. Constitutive. 

RELATION (re-fero, relatum, to bear back). — " When the mind 
so considers one thing that it does as it were bring it to and set 
it by another, and carries its view from one to the other, this 
is, as the words import, ?*elation and respect; and the denomi- 
nations given to positive things, intimating that respect, and 
serving as marks to lead the thoughts beyond the subject itself 
denominated to something distinct from it, are what we call 
relatives ; and the things so brought together, related. Thus, 
when the mind considers Caius as such a positive being, it takes 
nothing into that idea but what really exists in Caius '-, v. c 
when I consider him as a man, I have nothing in my mind but 
the complex idea of the species man. So, likewise, when I 
say Caius is a white man, I have nothing but the bare con- 
sideration of a man who hath that white colour. But when 
I give Caius the name husband, I intimate some other per- 
son ; and when I give him the name whiter, I intimate some 
other thing ; in both cases my thought is led to something 
beyond Caius, and there are two things brought into consider- 
ation." — Locke, Essay on Hum. Understand., book ii., chap. 
25. The two things thus brought into consideration are 
called relatives or correlatives, as father and son, husband 
and wife. 

" In all relation there must be a subject whence it com- 
mences, as snow ; another where it terminates, as a swan ; the 
relation itself, similitude ; and lastly, the source of that relation, 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 437 

RELATION- 

vjhiteness ; the swan is related to the snow by both of them 
being white" — Harris, Phil. Arrange., chap. 10. 

This is called predicamental relation, and forms one of the 
categories (jtc^os r/) of Aristotle. 

u Any sort of connection which is perceived or imagined 
between two or more things ; or any comparison which is 
made by the mind, is a relation. When we look at these two 
lines ===== we do not merely think of them separately, 
as this straight line, and that straight line ; but they are im- 
mediately connected together by a comparison which takes 
place in the mind as soon as they meet the eye. We perceive 
that these two lines are alike ; they are both straight ; and we 
call the notion that is formed by the comparison, the relation 
of sameness. We may then think of them as the same in length ; 
this comparison gives us the notion which we call the relation 
of equality. We think of them again as equally distant from 
each other, from end to end, and then we say they are parallel 
lines ; this word parallel represents nothing existing in the 
lines themselves, but only the notion formed by measuring the 
distance between them. All these notions spring up in the 
mind from the comparison of the two objects ; they belong- 
entirely to the mind, and do not exist in the things them- 
selves." — Taylor, Elements of Thought. 

" Another way," says Dr. Reid (Intell. Poio., essay vi., chap. 
2), u in which we get the notion of relations (which seems not 
to have occurred to Mr. Locke), is when, by attention to one 
of the related objects, we perceive or judge that it must, from 
its nature, have a certain relation to something else, which 
before, perhaps, we never thought of; and thus our attention 
to one of the related objects produces the notion of a correlate, 
and of a certain relation between them. Thus, when I attend 
to colour, figure, weight, I cannot help judging these to be 
qualities which cannot exist without a substance ; that is, 
something which is coloured, figured, heavy. If I had not 
perceived such things to be qualities, I should never have 
had any notion of then subject, or of their relation to it. By 
attending to the operations of thinking, memory, reasoning, 
we perceive or judge that there must be something which 



438 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

RELATIO.\- 

thinks, remembers, and reasons, which we call the mind. 
When we attend to any change that happens in nature, judg- 
ment informs us that there must be a cause of this change 
which had power to produce it ; and thus we get the notions of 
cause and effect, and of the relation between them. When we 
attend to body, we perceive that it cannot exist without space ; 
hence we got the notion of space (which is neither an object 
of sense nor of consciousness), and of the relation which bodies 
have to a certain portion of unlimited space, as their place."- 
See also Keid, Inquiry, chap. 1, sect. 7. Buffier calls relation, 
in this view, Occasio quam praibet objectum cogitandi de alio.- 
V. Suggestion. 

Although relations are not real entities, but merely mental 
modes of viewing things, let it be observed that our ideas of 
relation are not vague nor arbitrary, but are determined by 
the known qualities of the related objects. We cannot at will 
see relations for which there is no foundation in the nature of 
the related objects. Of all relations, the relations of number 
are the clearest and most accurately appreciated. 

RELATIVE is opposed to absolute — q. v. — V. Term. 

RELIGION (relego, religo). — This word, according to Cicero 
(De Nat. Deorum, ii., 28), is derived from, or rather com- 
pounded of, re and legere, to read over again, to reflect upon 
or to study the sacred books in which religion is delivered. Ac- 
cording to Lactantius (JDiv. Instit., 4), it comes from re-ligare, 
to bind back — because religion is that which furnishes the true 
ground of obligation. St. Augustine (De Vera. Relig., c. 55) 
gives the same derivation of the word. But he gives another 
origin of it (De Civit. Dei, lib. x., c. 3), where he says, u Deum, 
qui fons est nostras, beatitudinis, et omnis desiderii nostri finis, 
eligentes, immo potius religentes, amiseramns enim negligentes ; 
hunc, inquam, religentes, unde et religio dicta est, ad eum dilec- 
tione tendamus, ut perveniendo quiescamus." 

u As it is natural for man to review the train of his past 
actions, it is not incredible that the word religion is derived 
from relegere ; and that its primary reference is to that 
activity of conscience which leads us to review the past actions 
of our lives." — Gellius, Noct. Attic, No. 9. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 439 

RELIGION— 

44 Relligio, according to its primary signification, is perpetu- 
ally thoughtful, save in regard to some object affecting the 
conscience." — Donaldson, Varronianus, p. 407, 2d edit. 

Muller, Professor of Theology at Bale, published a Disserta- 
tion on this word in 1834. 

Religion is distinguished into natural and revealed, or 
that knowledge of God and of our duty which is derived 
from the light of nature or reason — and that knowledge of 
God and of our duty which comes to us from positive reve- 
lation. 

The epithet natural (or physical) has been objected to as 
applied to religion, inasmuch as all knowledge of God is super- 
sensuous. — V. Theology. 

In all forms of religion there is one part, which may be 
called the doctrine or dogma, which is to be received by faith ; 
and the cultus, or worship, which is the outward expression or 
mode of manifesting the religious sentiment. 
REMEMBRANCE, REMINISCENCE, RECOH.EECT10N (re- 
colligo, to gather together again ; or reminiscor, to remember). 
— 44 The perception which actually accompanies, and is annexed 
to any impression on the body, made by an external object, 
furnishes the mind with a distinct idea, which we call sensa- 
tion ; which is, as it were, the actual entrance of any idea into 
the understanding by the senses. The same idea, when it 
again recurs without the operation of the like object on the 
external sensory, is remembrance ; if it be sought after by the 
mind, and with pain and endeavour found and brought again 
into view, it is recollection; if it be held there long under 
attentive consideration, it is contemplation." — Locke, Essay on 
Hum. Understand., book ii., chap. 19. 

44 In other cases, the various particulars which compose our 
stock of knowledge are recalled in consequence of an effort of 
our will. This latter operation, too, is often called by the 
same name (memory), but is more properly distinguished by 
the word recollection " — Stewart, Elements, chap. 6, sect. 1. 

44 Reminiscence is the act of recovering, and recollection the 
act of combining remembrances. Those eminences to which 
we attach the subordinate parts of an object come first into 



440 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

REMEMBRANCE— 

reminiscence; when the intervening portions present them- 
selves in order, the recollection is complete." — Taylor, Syno- 
nyms. 

REMINISCENCE. — Memory is knowledge of some former con- 
sciousness. Reminiscence is the act by which we endeavour to 
recall and reunite former states of consciousness. It is a kind 
of reasoning by which we ascend from a present consciousness 
to a former, and from that to a more remote, till the whole 
facts of some case are brought again back to us. It is peculiar 
to man, while memory, as spontaneous, is shared by the brutes. 
" When we have a reminiscence" said Aristotle (De Mem. et 
Reminiscentia, c. 2), "we reason to the effect that we formerly 
experienced some impression of such or such a kind, so that 
in having a reminiscence we syllogise." 

" There is yet another kind of discussion, beginning with 
the appetite to recover something lost, proceeding from the 
present backward, from thought of the place where we miss at, 
to the thought of the place from whence we came last ; and 
from the thought of that to the thought of a place before, till 
we have in our mind some place, wherein we had the thing we 
miss : and this is called reminiscence" — Hobbes, Hum. Nat.^ 
chap. 4. — V. Contemplation, Memory, Retention. 

REMINISCENCE according to Plato. 

" Plato imagined, after more ancient philosophers, that 
every man is born with a certain reminiscence, and that when 
we seem to be taught we are only put in mind of what we 
knew in a former state." — Bolingbroke, essay ii., Presump- 
tion of Philosophers. 

The term employed by Plato was dyupvYiaig, which may be 
translated " knowing up." He did not apply it to every kind 
or degree of knowledge, but to that spontaneous movement of 
the mind by which it ascended from mere opinion (Bo|a) to 
science (kwr^ji). On such occasions the appearances of 
truth and beauty suggested or evolved the ideas of the true 
and the beautiful ; which seemed to belong to the soul and to 
have been formerly known. There was a stirring up or calling 
into act what was in the soul potentially. That they had been 
known in that former state of existence which Plato, in a 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY, 441 

REMINISCENCE— 

myth, represented the soul to have enjoyed, and were now 
merely recalled or remembered, is the view commonly given 
(Cicero, Tuscal., i., 24). But what Plato meant more spe- 
cially to intimate by the use of this word was, that all science 
or certainty is intuitive, and belongs to the reason, which 
gives knowledge in the last and highest degree. Conjecture 
(sUo&aia.'), belief (7ri<jTig), which, when conjoined, give opinion 
(Bo'iac), and reasoning Qiiczvotoi), which are the other degrees 
of knowledge, according to Plato, being unable to give ground 
for science or certainty." — Heusde, Init. Philosophy Platon., 
8vo, 1827, torn, i., pp. 33, 34. 

Olympiodorus, in a Commentary on the Phcedo of Plato, 
quoted by Harris (Hermes, p. 232), says : — " Inasmuch as the 
soul, by containing the principles of all beings, is a sort of 
omniform representation or exemplar ; when it is roused by 
objects of sense it recollects those principles which it contains 
within, and brings them forth." 

u Plato, it is believed, proposed his theory of reminiscence 
as a sort of allegory, signifying the power which the mind has 
to draw from itself, on occasion of perceptions, universal ideas, 
and the manner in which it rises to them resembling the 
manner in which is awakened all at once within us the 
remembrance of what we have dreamed." — Manuel de Philo- 
sophie, 8vo, Paris, 1846, p. 139. 

It was in the same sense that Socrates called himself a mid- 
wife of the mind. He assisted in bringing to the birth truths 
with which the mind was big and in labour. He unfolded 
what was infolded. 

Boethius, De ConsoL, says, the mind by teaching is only 
excited to know. And Aquinas, De Magistro, says, u Omnis 
disciplina Jit ex pre-existenti cognitione. . . . Ex Tiomine 
docente certitudinem scientice non acciperemus, nisi inesset nobis 
certitudo principiorum. " 

According to Mons. Chastel (Les Rationalistes et les Tra- 
ditioncdistes, 12mo, Paris, 1850, p. 150), Thomas Aquinas in 
his treatise, De Magistro, maintains the following points : — 

1. To the acquisition of science you must admit as pre- 
existent in us the knowledge of general principles, evident of 



442 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

REMINISCENCE— 

themselves, and all those notions which the mind frames 
immediately to itself by the aid of the first sensations; for 
all teaching supposes, in him who learns, some anterior know- 
ledge. 

2. But these first truths, conditions pre -requisite for all 
teaching, these general principles, these principles which are 
native and not taught, are known to us by that light of reason 
which God hath put in us, as the image of that uncreated truth 
which is reflected in our mind. They are given to us by 
nature as the germ of all the cognitions to which we ultimately 
attain. 

There are certain notions of which it is impossible for a man 
to be ignorant. 

3. It is from these principles, known in advance, that he 
who teaches should set out with us, to teach us other truths 
connected with these. His teaching consists in showing us 
this connection. Properly speaking, it is the knowledge of 
these principles and not teaching which gives us secondary 
knowledge, although teaching is the mediate cause. It would 
be impossible for us to learn of a man the knowledge which he 
wishes to teach us, if there were not in us beforehand those 
principles to which he connects his knowledge ; and all the 
certainty of that knowledge comes to us from the certainty of 
those principles, and ultimately from God who has given us the 
light of reason to know them. 

4. Thus the knowledge of first principles is not from teaching, 
although teaching may give secondary truths connected with 
them. 

5. But these secondary truths we receive or reject according 
to their conformity with the truth that is in us. 

6. Of these secondary truths which teaching gives, there are 
many which the mind may discover by its own force, as there are 
many diseases which cure themselves. 

Augustine also has a treatise, Be Magistro, in which, from a 
different point of view, he comes to conclusions substantially 
the same. "The certainty of science comes to us from God 
who has given to us the light of reason, For it is by this light 
that we know principles, and it is from principles that we 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 443 

REMINISCENCE— 

derive the certainty of science. And yet it is true, in a certain 
sense, that man produces in us knowledge. The pupil, if 
interrogated before teaching, could answer as to those prin- 
ciples by aid of which all teaching proceeds ; but he could not 
answer upon those things which are taught, which are the con- 
sequences of those principles. So that he does not learn prin- 
ciples but only the consequences of them. 

D'Alembert, as quoted by Mr. Stewart (vol. ii., p. 23), says, 
"It should seem that everything we learn from a good meta- 
physical book is only a sort of reminiscence of what the mind 
previously knew. 

Sir Walter Scott and others have alluded to a mental 
affection which they designate the sense of pre -existence. 
When the mind is in this state the scenes and events 
which are present and passing appear to have formerly been 
objects of consciousness. See quotations and references on 
this curious phenomenon in Notes and Queries, 17th January, 
1857, p. 50. 

On the Reminiscence of Plato, see Piccolomineus, Philosoph. 
Be Moribus, Francof., 1583, p. 450. 

REPRESENTATIVE- V. KNOWLEDGE. 

RESERVATION or RESTRICTION (as it is called by casuists) 
has reference to the duty of speaking what is true; and is 
distinguished as real and mental. 
Real Restriction takes place when the words used are not true 
if strictly interpreted, but there is no deviation from truth if 
the circumstances be considered. One man asks another, Have 
you dined? and the answer given is, Xo. The party giving 
this answer has dined, times without number. But his answer 
is restricted by the circumstances to to-day ; and in that sense 
is true. 
Mental Restriction or Reservation consists in saying so far what 
is true, and to be believed, but adding mentally some qualifica- 
tion which makes it not to be true. A debtor asked by his 
creditor for payment of his debt, says, — U I will certainly pay 
you to-morrow" adding to himself — a in part," whereas the 
words audibly uttered referred to the whole amount. 

There was published in 12mo, Lond., 1851, A Treatise of 



444 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

RESERVATION— 

Equivocation, from a MS. in the Bodleian Library, written 
about 1600. It was referred to in the trials on the Gunpowder 
Plot. 

The following occurs at p. 17: — " A farmer hath come to 
sell corn. He selleth all that he can sell, because he reserveth 
the rest for his own necessary use. Then cometh one and 
desireth to buy corn. He may truly say, and swear (if it be 
needful) that he hath none ; for the circumstance of the person 
interpreteth the meaning to be that he hath none to sell."- 
This is Reservation or Restriction, rather than Equivocation. 

At p. 29 : — u If I be asked whether such a one be in my 
house, who is there indeed, I may answer in Latin 4 Non est 
hie,' meaning he doth not eat in my house. 1 ' — This is Equi- 
vocation — q. v. 

RETENTION (retineo, to keep hold of). 

u The power of reproduction (into consciousness) supposes 
a power of retention (out of consciousness). To this conser- 
vative power I confine exclusively the term Memory." — Sir 
Will. Hamilton, Reid's Works, p. 912. 

"There seems good reason for confining the appellation of 
memory to the simple power of retention, which undoubtedly 
must be considered as an original aptitude of mind, irresolv- 
able into any other. The power of recalling the preserved 
impressions seems on the other hand rightly held to be only a 
modified exercise of the suggestive or reproductive faculty." — 
Dr. Tulloch, Theism, p. 206.— F. Memory. 

RIGHT. — " Right and duty are things very different, and have 
even a kind of opposition ; yet they are so related that the one 
cannot even be conceived without the other ; and he that . 
understands the one must understand the other. They have 
the same relation which credit has to debt. As all credit 
supposes an equivalent debt, so all right supposes a corre- 
sponding duty. There can be no credit in one party without 
an equivalent debt in another party ; and there can be no 
right in one party, without a corresponding duty in another 
party. The sum of credit shows the sum of debt ; and the 
sum of men's rights shows, in like manner, the sum of their 
duty to one another. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 4-45 

BIGHT— 

•'The word right has a very different meaning, according 
as it is applied to actions or to persons. A right action 
(rectum) is an action agreeable to our duty. But when we 
speak of the rights of men (jus), the word has a very different, 
and a more artificial meaning. It is a term of art in law, and 
signifies all that a man may lawfully do, all that he may law- 
fully possess and use, and all that he may lawfully claim of any 
other person. 

"We can be at no loss to perceive the duties corresponding 
to the several kinds of 'rights. What I have a right to do, it 
is the duty of all men not to hinder me from doing. What 
is my property or real right, no man ought to take from me ; 
or to molest me in the use and enjoyment of it. And what I 
have a right to demand of any man, it is his duty to perform. 
Between the right on the one hand, and the duty on the other, 
there is not only a necessary connection, but, in reality, they 
are only different expressions of the same meaning, just as it 
is the same thing to say, I am your debtor, and to say, you are 
my creditor ; or as it is the same thing to say, I am your father, 
and to say, you are my son." 

"As there is a strict notion of justice, in which it is distin- 
guished from humanity and charity, so there is a more exten- 
sive signification of it, in which it includes those virtues. The 
ancient moralists, both Greek and Roman, under the cardinal 
virtue of Justice, included Beneficence ; and in this extensive 
sense, it is often used in common language. The like may be 
said of right, which in a sense not uncommon, is extended to 
every proper claim of humanity and charity, as well as to the 
claims of strict justice. But. as it is proper to distinguish these 
two kinds of claims by different names, writers in natural 
jurisprudence have given the name of perfect rights to the 
claims of strict justice, and that of imperfect rights to the 
claims of charity and humanity. Thus all the duties of 
humanity have imperfect rights corresponding to them, as 
those of strict justice have perfect rights." — Keid, Act. Pou\, 
essay v., chap. 3. 

"The adjective right has a much wider signification than 
the substantive right. Everything is right which is conform- 



446 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

RIGHT— 

able to the supreme rule of human action ; but that only is a 
right which, being conformable to the supreme rule, is realized 
in society and vested in a particular person. Hence the two 
words may often be properly opposed. We may say that a 
poor man has no right to relief, but it is right he should have 
it. A rich man has a right to destroy the harvest of his fields, 
but to do so would not be right. 

"To a right, on one side, corresponds an obligation on the 
other. If a man has a right to my horse, I have an obligation 
to let him have it. If a man has a right to the fruit of a 
certain tree, all other persons are under an obligation to 
abstain from appropriating it. Men are obliged to respect 
each others' rights. 

u My obligation is to give another man his right; my duty 
is to do what is right. Hence duty is a wider term than 
obligation ; just as right, the adjective, is wider than right the 
substantive. 

" Duty has no correlative, as obligation has the correlative 
right. What it is our duty to do, we must do, because it is 
right, not because any one can demand it of us. We may, 
however, speak of those who are particularly benefited by the 
discharge of our duties, as having a moral claim upon us. A 
distressed man has a moral claim to be relieved, in cases in 
which it is our duty to relieve him. 

u The distinctions just explained are sometimes expressed 
by using the terms perfect obligation and imperfect obligation 
for obligation and duty respectively : and the terms perfect 
right and imperfect right for right and moral claim respectively. 
But these phrases have the inconvenience of making it seem as 
if our duties arose from the rights of others ; and as if duties 
were only legal obligations, with an inferior degree of binding 
force." — Whewell, Elements of Morality, book i., § 84-89, — 
V. Jurisprudence, Rectitude. 
BOSICRUCIANS, a name assumed by a sect of Hermetical philo- 
sophers, who came into notice in Germany towards the close of 
the fourteenth century. Christian Hosenkreuz, from whom, 
according to some, the name is derived, was born in 1378, 
travelled to the East, and after keeping company with magi- 



1AEULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 447 

ROsICRrCIA>S- 

cians and cabalists, returned to Germany with their secrets, 
which he communicated to three of his friends, or sons, and 
shutting himself up in a cave, died at the age of 106 in 1481. 
The secrets of the fraternity of the Rosy Cross, which gradually 
increased in numbers, had reference to four points — the trans- 
mutation of metals, the prolongation of life, the knowledge of 
what is passing in distant places, and the application of the 
Cabala and the science of numbers to discover the most hidden 
things. They assumed the signature F.E.C., or Fratres Boris 
. it being pretended that the matter of the philosopher's 
stone was dew concocted Or, according to Mosheim, the 
name is compounded of Eos, dew; and crux, the cross. In 
the language of alchemy, the figure of the cross signifies light, 
and dew was reckoned the most powerful dissolvent of gold ; 
so that a Eosicrucian meant one who, by the assistance of dew, 
sought for light or the philosopher's stone.— Mosheim, Eccles. 
£ '..:.. vol. iv. ; Louis Siguier, L'Alchirnie et Les Alchimistes. 
Par.. 1 ; " 

BrLE- Rectitude is a law, as well as a rule to us : it not only 
;>, but binds all. as far as it is perceived." — Price, Eev. of 
rals, chap. 6. 

A rule prescribes means to attain some end. But the end 
may not be one which all men are to aim at ; and the rule may 
not be followed by all. A law enjoins something to be done, 
and is binding upon all to whom it is made known. 

" A rule, in its proper signification, is an instrument, by means 
of which we draw the shortest line from one point to another, 
which for this very reason is called a straight line. 

•• In a figurative and moral sense, a rule imports nothing 
it a principle or maxim, which furnishes man with a sure 
and concise method of attaining to the end he proposes." 
Burlam- -. Law, part i., chap. 5. 



EMAI&H G xm yl:: . signifying a host, or from tsaha, in Syriac, to 
adore : or from Saba the son of Cush, and grandson of Seth) 
means the worship of the stars, or host of heaven, which 



448 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

SJJBAISlH— 

prevailed from an early period in the East, especially in Syria, 
Arabia, Chaldea, and Persia. The Sabseans are not mentioned 
by the Greek or Roman writers, and by the Arabian authors 
they are called Nabatheans, as if descendants from Nebaioth, 
son of Ishmael. Their doctrines are expounded by Moses 
Maimonides in the third part of his work, De More NevocMm. 
There was a popular and a philosophic creed with them. Ac- 
cording to the former the stars were worshipped ; and the sun, 
as supreme God, ruled over heaven and earth, and the other 
heavenly bodies were but the ministers of his will. According 
to the philosophic creed, the stars consisted of matter and mind. 
God is not the matter of the universe, but the spirit which 
animates it. But both are eternal, and will eternally exist, for 
the one cannot pass into, or absorb the other. 

Pocock, Specimen Hist. Arab., 4to, Oxf., 1649, p. 138 ; 

Hyde, Veterum Persarum Historia, 8vo, Oxf., 1766 ; Spencer, 

De Legibus Hebrceorum, 2 vols., fob, Camb., 1727. 

SAME, in its primary sense, denotes identity — q. v. 

In a secondary sense it denotes great similarity, and in 
popular usage admits of degrees, as when we speak of two 
things being nearly the same. To this ambiguity, Whately 
refers much of the error of realism ; of Plato's theory of ideas; 
of the personification and deification in poetical mythology, &c. 
— Whately, Log., App. i. 
SANCTION (sancio, to ratify or confirm). — U I shall declare the 
sanction of this law of nature, viz., those rewards which God 
hath ordained for the observation of it, and those punishments 
He hath appointed for its breach or transgression." — Tyrell, 
On the Law of Nature, p. 125. 

" The sanctions of rewards and punishments which God has 
annexed to his laws have not, in any proper sense, the nature 
of obligation. They are only motives to virtue, adapted to the 
state and condition, the weakness and insensibility of man. 
They do not make or constitute duty, but presuppose it." — 
Adams, Sermon on Nature and Obligation of Virtue. 

The consequences which naturally attend virtue and vice are 
the sanction of duty, or of doing what is right, as they are 
intended to encourage us to the discharge of it, and to deter 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 449 

SANCTION- 
US from the breach or neglect of it. And these natural con- 
sequences of virtue and vice are also a declaration, on the part 
of God, that He is in favour of the one and against the other, 
and are intimations, that His love of the one and His hatred of 
the other may be more fully manifested hereafter. By Locke, 
Paley, and Bentham, the term sanction, or enforcement of 
obedience, is applied to reward as well as to punishment. But 
Mr. Austin {Province of Jurispr. Determined, p. 10) con- 
fines it to the latter ; perhaps, because human laws only punish, 
and do not reward. 

SAVACJE and BARBAROUS. — Ferguson (Essay on Hist, of Civ. 
Soc, part ii., sect. 2) states that the history of mankind, in 
their rudest state, may be considered under two heads, viz., 
that of the savage, who is not yet acquainted with property, 
and that of the barbarian, to whom it is, although not ascer- 
tained by laws, a principal object of care and desire. 

The distinction here made between the savage and the bar- 
barous states of society, resolves itself into the absence or 
presence of political government ; for without political govern- 
ment, property cannot exist. The distinction is an important 
one ; and it would be convenient to apply the term savage to 
communities which are permanently in a state of anarchy, which 
ordinarily exist without government, and to apply the term 
barbarous to communities, which, though in a rude state as 
regards the arts of life, are nevertheless subject to a govern- 
ment. In this sense, the North American Indians would be in 
a savage, while the Arab tribes, and most of the Asiatic nations, 
would be in a barbarous state. Montesquieu's distinction 
between savages and barbarians (Esprit des Lois, xviii. 11), id 
different in form, but in substance it is founded on the same 
principle. Hugh Murray (Enquiries respecting the Character 
of Nations, and the Progress of Society, Edin., 1808) lays it 
down (p. 230) that the savage form ot society is without 
government. 

According to many ancient and modern philosophers, the 

savage state was the primitive state of the human race. But 

others, especially Bonald and De Maistre, having maintained 

that the nations now found in a savage state have accidentallv 

2 G 



450 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

SAVAGE— 

3egenerated from the primitive state, which was a state of 
knowledge and civilization. 
SCEPTICISM (GKinTopcit, to look, to seek) is used as synony- 
mous with doubt— q. v. But doubt may be removed by evidence, 
and give way to conviction or belief. The characteristic of 
scepticism is to come to no conclusion for or against — l^o?^, 
holding off, and consequent tranquillity — drcc^ot^tx. Absolute 
objective certainty being unattainable, scepticism holds that in 
the contradictions of the reason, truth is as much on one side as 
on the other — ovlev p&Khov. It was first taught by Pyrrho, who 
flourished in Greece about 340 B.C. Hence it is sometimes 
called Pyrrhonism. The word is generally used in a bad sense, 
as equivalent to infidelity or unbelief. But in the following 
passages it means, more correctly, the absence of determination. 
u We shall not ourselves venture to determine anything, in 
so great a point ; but sceptically leave it undecided." — Cud- 
worth, Intell. Syst, p. 806. 

"That all his arguments (Bp. Berkeley's) are, in reality, 
merely sceptical, appears from this, that they admit of no 
answer and produce no conviction. Their only effect is to cause 
that momentary amazement, and irresolution, and confusion, 
which is the result of scepticism." — Hume, Essays, note, p. 369, 
4to edit. 

Scepticism is opposed to dogmatism — q. v. 

" The writings of the best authors among the ancients being 

full and solid, tempt and carry me which way almost they will. 

He that I am reading seems always to have the most force ; 

and I find that every one in turn has reason, though they 

contradict one another." 
This is said by Montaigne, book ii., chap. 12, in the true 

spirit of scepticism, 

" Que scais-je ? was the motto of Montaigne, 
As also of the first academicians ; 
That all is dubious which man may attain, 
Was one of their most favourite positions. 
There's no such thing as certainty, that's plain 
As any of mutality's conditions; 
So little do we know what we're about in 
This world, I doubt if doubt itself be doubting." 

Byron, Don Juan % Canto ix., xvii. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 451 

SCEPTICISM— 

Glanvill (Joseph) has a work which he entitled Scepsis 
Scientifica, or the Folly of Dogmatising ; Staudlin wrote the 
History and Spirit of Scepticism, 2 vols., Leipsic, 1794-5 ; 
Sanchez (Fr.) or Sanctius wrote a Tractalus de multum nobili 
et prima universali scientia, quod nihil scitur, 4to, Lyons, 1581 ; 
Crousazhas Examen du Pyrrhonisme Ancienne et Moderne. 

SCHEMA (o^^a, shape), " termed by Mr. Semple effigiation, is 
the representation of a universal proceeding of the imagination 
to procure for a conception its image. To all conceptions an 
object must be given, and objects are given to us only through 
the modification of the sensibility. Pure conceptions a priori 
must contain a priori formal conditions of the sensibility (of the 
internal sense especially), under which alone the pure under- 
standing-conception a priori can be applied to any object a 
priori. This formal and pure condition of sensibility, and to 
which the pure understanding-conception is restricted in its use, 
is termed by Kant the transcendental schema of this understand- 
ing-conception. The procedure with these schemata, or the 
sensible conditions under which pure understanding alone can 
be used, he also termed the schematismus of the pure under- 
standing. The schema is only in itself a product of the imagi- 
nation, but it is still to be distinguished from an image in this 
respect, that it is a single intuition. Five dots in a line, for 
example, are an image of the number five ; but the schema of 
a conception, for instance, of a number in general, is more the 
representation of a method of representing a multitude accord- 
ing to a certain conception, for instance a thousand, in an 
image, than this image itself." — Haywood, Explan. of Terms 
in Crit. of Pure Reason. 

SCHOLASTIC. — Scholasticus, as a Latin word, was first used by 
Petronius. Quintilian subsequently applied it to the rhetori- 
cians in his day : and we read in Jerome, that Serapion, having 
acquired great fame, received as a title of honour the surname 
Scholasticus. When the schools of the Middle Ages were 
opened, it was applied to those charged with the education of 
youth. 

44 We see the original sense of the word scholastic" says Dr. 
Hampden (Bampton Led., i., p. 7), " in the following passage : 



452 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

SCHOLASTIC— 

■ — Omnes enim in scriptis suis causas tantum egerunt suas ; et 
propriis magis laudibus quam aliorum utilitatibus consulentes, non 
idfacere adnisi sunt ut salubres el salutiferi, sed ut scholastici ac 
diserti haherentur." — Salvianus, De Gubern. Dei, Prcefat. 
Scholastic Philosophy* — This phrase denotes a period rather 
than a system of philosophy. It is the philosophy that was 
tanght in the schools during the Middle Ages. The Middle 
Ages extend from the commencement of the ninth to the six- 
teenth century. What has been called the Classic Age of the 
scholastic philosophy, includes the thirteenth and fourteenth 
centuries. It begins when the metaphysics of Aristotle were 
introduced into France by Latin translations, and terminates 
with the Council of Florence and the taking of Constantinople, 
The only philosophy that was taught during that period, was 
taught by the clergy ; and was therefore very much mixed up 
with theology. The only way of teaching was by lectures or 
dictates ; and hence the phrase, legere in philosophia. There 
was no one system uniformly taught ; but different and con- 
flicting opinions were held and promulgated by different doctors, 
The method was that of interpretation. Grammar was taught 
by prelections on Donatus and Priscian f and rhetoric by pre- 
lections on some parts of Cicero or Boethius-. But logic 
shared most of their attention, and was taught by prelections 
on such of the works of Aristotle as were best knowm. The 
Timams of Plato also occupied much of their attention ; and 
they laboured to reconcile the doctrines of the one philosopher 
with those of the other, 

Mr. Morell says (Phil, of Religion, p. 369), "It has been 
usual to divide the whole scholastic periods into three eras.* — 
1 . That which was marked by the absolute subordination of 
philosophy to theology, that is, authority. 2. That which was 
marked by the friendly alliance of philosophy with dogmatic 
theology. 3. The commencement of a separation between the 
two, or the dawn of the entire independence of philosophy. 

The first years of scholastic philosophy were marked by 
authority. In the ninth century, Joannes Scotus Erigena 

* Tenneman makes four periods of scholastic philosophy, according to the prevalence 
of Realism or Nominalism. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 453 

ICHEOI.ASTIC— 

attempted to assert the claims of reason. Two hundred years 
after, the first era was brought to a close by Abelard. The 
second is marked by Albert us Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, and 
Duns Scotus. Raymond Lully, Roger Bacon, followed by 
Occam and the Xominalists, represent the third and declining 
era. 

The taking of Constantinople by the Turks, the invention of 
printing, and the progress of the Reformation, put an end to 
the scholastic philosophy. Philosophy was no longer confined 
to the schools and to preelections. The press became a most 
extensive lecturer, and many embraced the opportunities offered 
of extending knowledge. 

In addition to general histories of philosophy, see Rousselot, 
Etudes sur la Philosophic clans le Moyen Age, 3 torn., 8vo, Paris, 
1840-2 ; Haureau, De la Philosophic Scholastiqne, 2 torn., 8vo, 
Paris, 1850 ; Cousin, Fragmens Philosophiques, torn, hi., Paris, 
1810. Also his Introduction to CBuvres inedites d? Abelard. 
SCIENCE (scientid) means knowledge, emphatically so called, that 
is, knowledge of principles and causes* 

Science (h^iaT'^un) has its name from bringing us (Itj 
GToiGiv) to some stop and boundary of things, taking us away 
from the unbounded nature and mutability of particulars ; for 
it is conversant about subjects that are general and invariable. 
This etymology given by Nicephorus (Blemmida), and long 
before him adopted by the Peripatetics, came originally from 
Plato, as may be seen in his Cratylus. 

u</ Or/ scicntice fundamentum est, Titon fastigium," — Tren- 
delenburg, Elementa Log. Arish, p. 76. 

u SirWilL Hamilton, in his Lectures on Logic, defined science 
as a ' complement of cognitions, having, in point of form, the 
character of logical perfection, and in point of matter, the 
character of real truth.' " — Dove, Political Science, p. 76. 

Science is knowledge certain and evident in itself, or by the 
principle from which it is deduced, or with which it is certainly 
connected. It is subjective as existing in a mind — object 
embodied in truths — speculative, as resting in attainment of 
truths, as in physical science — practical, as leading to do some- 
thing, as in ethical science. 



454 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

SCIENCE— 

Science, art, and empiricism, are defined by Sopater, On 
Hermogenes, apud Rhet. Gr., vol. v., pp. 3-5, ed. Walz, as 
follows : — 

Science consists in an infallible and unchanging knowledge 
of phenomena. 

Art is a system formed from observation, and directed to a 
useful end. 

Empiricism is an unreasoning and instinctive imitation of 
previous practice. 

Art is of three kinds — theoretic, practical, and mixed. 

" "No art, however, is purely theoretic or contemplative. 
The examples given are of science, not art. It is a part of 
grammatical science to say that all words with a certain termi- 
nation have a certain accent. When this is converted into a 
rule, it becomes part of an art." — Sir G. C. Lewis, On Methods 
of Observ. in Politics, chap. 19, sect. 2. 

u In science, scimus ut sciamus; in art, scimus ut producamus. 
And, therefore, science and art may be said to be investigations 
of truth :* but one, science, inquires for the sake of know- 
ledge : the other, art, for the sake of production :f and 
hence science is more concerned with the higher truths, art 
with the lower : and science never is engaged as art is in pro- 
ductive application.} And the most perfect state of science, 
therefore, will be the most high and accurate inquiry ; the 
perfection of art will be the most apt and efficient system of 
rules: art always throwing itself into the form of rules." § — 
Karslake, Aids to Log., b. i., p. 24. 

" Science and art differ from one another, as the understand- 
ing differs from the will, or as the indicative mood in grammar 
differs from the imperative. The one deals in facts, the other 
in precepts. Science is a collection of truths ; art a body of 
rules, or directions for conduct. The language of science is, 
This is, or, This is not ; This does, or does not happen. The 
language of art is, Do this, Avoid that. Science takes cogniz- 

* This is, speaking logically, "the Genus " of the two. 
t These are their differentia, or distinctive characteristics. 
% These are their specific properties. 

§ This distinction of science and art is given in Aristotle.— See Poster. Analyt., i., 
194, ii. { 13. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 455 

8CIEFTCE— 

ance of a phenomenon, and endeavours to discover its law ; art 
proposes to itself an end, and looks out for means to effect it." 
— J. S. Mill, Essays on Pol Econ. — V. Art, Demonstration. 
CIEIYCES (The Occult) are so called (from occulto, to hide or 
conceal) because they have reference to qualities or powers 
which are not such as are common or commonly known. The 
belief in beings having superhuman powers, as fairies, familiars, 
daemons, &c, in augury, oracles, witchcraft, &c, in dreams and 
visions, &c, in divination and astrology, &c, and in talismans 
and amulets, &c, leads to the prosecution of what has been 
called the Occult Sciences. — See a vol. under this title in the 
cabinet edition of the Encyclopaedia Metropolitana. 

SCIENTIA (Media). — "According to Molina, the objects of the 
divine knowledge are the possible, the actual, and the condi- 
tional. The knowledge of the possible is simple intelligence ; 
of the actual, scientia visionis ; and of the conditional, scientia 
media, intermediate between that of intelligence and vision. 
An example of scientia media is that of David asking the 
oracle if the inhabitants of the city of Keilah, in which he 
meant to take refuge, would deliver it up to Saul if he laid 
siege to it. The answer was in the affirmative, whereupon 
David took a different course." — Leibnitz, Sur la Bonte de 
Dieu, partie 1, sect. 40. 

In La Cause de Dieu, &c, sec. 17, Leibnitz has said, " Scientia 
media might rather be understood to mean the science not only 
of future conditionals, but universally of all future contingents. 
Then science of simple intelligence would be restricted to the 
knowledge of truths possible and necessary ; scientia visionis to 
that of truths contingent and actual. Scientia media would 
thus have it in common with the first that it concerned truths 
possible ; and with the second, that it applied to truths con- 
tingent." — See Keid, Act. Pow., essay iv., chap. 11. 

SCIOL.IST {sciolus, one who thinks he knows much and knows 
but little). — " Some have the hap to be termed learned men, 
though they have gathered up but the scraps of knowledge here 
and there, though they be but smatterers and mere sciolists" — 
Howell, Letters, b. iii., let. 8. 

SCIOITIACIIY {qkio,, a shadow ; and f^x^y a light).— " But pray, 



456 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

8CIOMACHY- 

countryman, to avoid this sciomachy, or imaginary combat with 
words, let me know, sir, what you mean by the name of tyrant." 
— Cowley, On the Government of Oliver Cromwell. 

SECUIiARlSUl is the Latin for this-ivorld-ism, and means, " attend 
to the world that you are now in, and let the next alone." — 
Arnot, lllust. of Proverbs, p. 868. 

Its capital principles are — 1. That attention to temporal 
things should take precedence of considerations relating to 
a future existence. 2. That science is the providence of 
life, and that spiritual dependency in human affairs may be 
attended with material destruction. 3. That there exist, in- 
dependently of scriptural religion, guarantees of morality in 
human nature, intelligence, and utility. 

The aim of secularism is to aggrandize the present life. For 
eternity, it substitutes time ; for providence, science ; for 
fidelity to the Omniscient, usefulness to man. Its great advo- 
cate is Mr. Holyoake. 

SECUNDUM QUID (to x,a,6 o) is opposed to Secundum ipsum (to 
xt&Q uvro) as the relative to the non-relative or the limited to 
the unlimited. Mr. Maurice illustrates Secundum quid by a 
passage from "As you like it:" u In respect that it is of the 
country it is a good life, but in respect it is not of the court it 
is a vile life." — Arist., Metaphys., lib. iv., c. 20. — V. Fallacy. 

SEIiF-CONSCIOUSNESS — V. APPERCEPTION. 

SELFISHNESS "consists not in the indulging of this or that 
particular propensity, but in disregarding, for the sake of any 
kind of personal gratification or advantage, the rights or the 
feelings of other men. It is, therefore, a negative quality ; 
that is, it consists in not considering what is due to one's neigh- 
bours, through a deficiency of justice or benevolence. And 
selfishness, accordingly, will show itself in as many different 
shapes as there are different dispositions in men. 

" You may see these differences even in very young children. 
One selfish child, who is greedy, will seek to keep all the cakes 
and sweetmeats to himself; another, who is idle, will not care 
what trouble he causes to others, so he can save his own ; an- 
other, who is vain, will seek to obtain the credit which is due 
to others ; one who is covetous, will seek to gain at another's 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 457 

expense, &c. In short, each person c has a self of his own.' 
And, consequently, though you may be of a character very 
unlike that of some selfish person, you may yet be, in your 
own way, quite as selfish as he. And it is possible to be selfish 
in the highest degree, without being at all too much actuated 
by self-love, but unduly neglectful of others when your own 
gratification, of whatever kind, is concerned." — Whately, Les- 
sons on Morals, p. 143. 

Selfishness exists only in reference to others, and could have 
on place in one who lived alone on a desert island, though he 
might have, of course, every degree of self-love ; for selfishness 
is not an excess of self-love, and consists not in an over- desire 
of happiness, but in placing your happiness in something which 
interferes with, or leaves you regardless of that of others. ]STor 
are we to suppose that selfishness and want of feeling are either 
the same or inseparable. For, on the one hand, I have known 
such as have had very little feeling, but felt for others as much 
nearly as for themselves, and were, therefore, far from selfish ; 
and, on the other hand, some, of very acute feelings, feel for 
no one but themselves, and, indeed, are sometimes among the 
most cruel." — Whately, On Bacon, p. 221. 
SEr.F-li©VE is sometimes used in a general sense to denote all 
those principles of our nature which prompt us to seek our own 
good, just as those principles which lead us to seek the good 
of others are all comprehended under the name of benevolence. 
All our desires tend towards the attainment of some good or 
the averting of some evil — having reference either to ourselves 
or others, and may therefore be brought under the two heads 
of benevolence and self-love. 

But besides this general sense of the word to denote all 
those desires which have a regard to our own gratification or 
good, self-love is more strictly used to signify " the desire for 
our own welfare, as such." In this sense, "it is quite distinct 
from all our other desires and propensities," says Dr. Whately 
(Lessons on Morals, p. 142), " though it may often tend in the 
same direction with some of them. One person, for instance, 
may drink some water because he is thirsty ; and another may, 
without thirst, drink — suppose from a mineral spring, beeause 



458 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

SELF-LOVE- 

he believes it will be good for his health. This latter is im- 
pelled by self-love, but not the other. 

" So again, one person may pursue some course of study in 
order to qualify himself for some profession by which he may 
advance in life, and another from having a taste for that study, 
and a desire for that branch of knowledge. This latter, though 
he may perhaps be, in fact, promoting his own welfare, is not 
acting from self -love. For as the object of thirst is not happi- 
ness, but drink, so the object of curiosity is not happiness, 
but knowledge. And so of the rest." 

Self-love may, like any other of our tendencies, be cherished 
and indulged to excess, or it may be ill- directed. But within 
due bounds it is allowable and right, and by no means incom- 
patible with benevolence, or a desire to promote the happiness 
of others. And Dr. Hutcheson, who maintains that kind affec- 
tion is what constitutes an agent virtuous, has said, that he 
who cherishes kind affection towards all, may also love himself ; 
may love himself as a part of the whole system of rational and 
sentient beings ; may promote his own happiness in preference 
to that of another who is not more deserving of his love ; and 
may be innocently solicitous about himself, while he is wisely 
benevolent towards all. — Inquiry concerning Moral Good and 
Evil, sect. iii. 

The error of Hobbes, and the school of philosophers who 
maintained that in doing good to others our ultimate aim is to 
do good to ourselves, lay in supposing that there is any anta- 
gonism between benevolence and self love. So long as self-love 
does not degenerate into selfishness, it is quite compatible with 
true benevolence. 

In opposition to the views of Hobbes and the selfish school 
of philosophers, see Butler, Sermons, On Hum. Nat., On Com- 
passion, &c. ; Turnbull, Nature and Origin of Laws, vol. ii., 
p. 258 ; Hume, On General Principles of Morals, sect. 2 ; 
Hutcheson, Inquiry concerning Moral Good and Evil, sect. 2 ; 
Hazlitt, Essay on Principles of Hum. Action, p. 239 ; Mackin- 
tosh, View of Ethical Philosophy, p. 192. 
8EMAT©L©G¥ (aqfca, a sign ; and "Kayos, discourse), the doctrine 
of signs — q. v. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 459 

SENSATION. — " The earliest sign by which the Ego becomes per- 
ceptible is corporeal sensation. 

" Without this general innate sensation we should not possess 
the certainty that our body is our body ; for it is as much an 
object for the other senses as anything else that we can see, 
hear, taste, or feel. This original general innate sensation is 
necessary to the existence of all other particular sensations, 
and may exist independently of the nervous system. Polypi, 
animals of the simplest structure, without a nervous system 
distinct from the rest of the organic mass, show traces of innate 
sensation. The light by means of which we see, acts not only 
on the visual nerves, but also on the fluids of the eye, and the 
sensations of sight partly depend on the structure of the eye. 
This sensibility, therefore, appears to be a necessary attribute 
of animated organic matter itself. 

" All the perceptions of sense are rooted in the general 
sensation. The child must be conscious of his senses before 
he applies them. This sensation, however, is very obscure ; 
even pain is not clearly felt by it at the place where it exists. 
Equally obscure is the notion which it entertains of an object. 
Though Brach, therefore, is right in ascribing something ob- 
jective, even to the general sensation, since conditions cannot 
communicate themselves, without communicating (though ever 
so obscurely) something of that which produces the condition — 
nay, strictly speaking, as even in the idea ' subject,' that of 
an 'object' is involved, yet it is advisable to abide by the 
distinction founded by Kant, according to which, by in- 
nate sensation, we especially perceive our own personality 
(subject), and by the senses we specially perceive objects, and 
thus in the ascending line, feeling, taste, smell, hearing, and 
sight. 

" The next step from this obscure original innate sensation 
is particular sensation through the medium of the nervous 
system, which, in its more profound, and yet more obscure 
sphere, produces common sensation (Ccenesthesis), and in a 
higher manifestation, the perceptions of the senses. Ccenes- 
thesis, or common feeling, is referred to the ganglionic nerves. 
It may be called subjective, inasmuch as the body itself gives 



460 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

§SNSATION- 

the excitement to the nerve concerned.* By the Ccenesthesis, 
states of our body are revealed to us which have their seat in 
the sphere of the vegetative life. These states are — 

" 1. General: — corporeal heaviness and buoyancy, atony, 
toniety. 

;c 2. Special: — hunger, thirst, sexual instinct, &c. 

u The sensations of pain, titillation, itching, &c, which are 
generally cited here, belong, in their more common accepta- 
tion, to the general corporeal feeling; in their more local 
limitation, with distinct perception of the object exciting, to 
the sense of touch ; but when they arise from the nervous 
system allotted to the vegetative sphere of the body, they 
certainly belong to the Ccenesthesis in the more limited sense 
of the word. 

"To this class belongs especially the anxiety arising from 
impediment in respiration, and from nausea. 

a In the analysis of the psycho -physical processes proceed- 
ing outwards from sensation to perception, we encounter 
after the organs of the Ccenesthesis, the organs of sense. "- 
Feuchtersleben, Med. Psychology, 1847, p. 83. 
Sensation and Perception. — U A conscious presentation, if it 
refers exclusively to the subject, as a modification of our own 
being, is = sensation. The same if it refers to an object, is 
= perception." — Coleridge, Church and State — quoted by 
Thomson, Outline of Laws of Thought, p. 104. 

Eousseau distinguished sensations as affectives, or giving 
pleasure or pain ; and representatives, or giving knowledge of 
objects external. 

Paffe (Sur la Sensibilite) distinguishes the element affectif 
and the element instructif 

In like manner Dr. Reid regards sensation not only as a 
state of feeling, but a sign of that which occasions it. 

Bozelli {T>e V Union de la Philosoph. avec la Morale) calls 
sensations, in so far as they are representative, in their philoso- 

* However subjective this sensation is, there is always in it the indication of an 
object, as Brach shows; hence illustrating the instinct of animals. Presentiment, too, 
chiefly belongs to this system. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 4GI 

SENSATION— 

phical form, in so far as they give pleasure or pain, in their 
moral form or character. 

"To sensation I owe all the certainty I have of my exis- 
tence as a sentient being, to perception a certainty not less 
absolute, that there are other beings besides me." — Thurot, 
De VEntendement, &c, torn, i., p. 43. 

Sensation properly expresses that change in the state of the 
mind which is produced by an impression' upon an organ of 
sense (of which change we can conceive the mind to be con- 
scious, without any knowledge of external objects) : perception, 
on the other hand, expresses the knowledge or the intimations 
we obtain, by means of our sensations, concerning the qualities 
of matter ; and consequently involves, in every instance, the 
notion of externality or outness, which it is necessary to exclude 
in order to seize the precise import of the word sensation. 

Sensation has been employed to denote — 

1. The process of sensitive apprehension, both in its subjec- 
tive and its objective relations ; like the Greek cesthesis. 

2. It was limited first in the Cartesian school, and thereafter 
in that of Reid, to the subjective phasis of our sensitive cogni- 
tions. — Sir W. Hamilton, Eeid's Works, note D*. 

" Sensation proper, is not purely a passive state, but implies 
a certain amount of mental activity. It may be described, on 
the psychological side, as resulting directly from the attention 
which the mind gives to the affections of its own organism. 
This description may at first sight appear to be at variance 
with the facts of the case, inasmuch as every severe affection 
of the body produces pain, quite independently of any know- 
ledge we may possess of the cause or of any operation of the 
will being directed towards it. Facts, however, rightly 
analyzed, show us, that if the attention of the mind be 
absorbed in other things, no impulse, though it amount to 
the laceration of the nerves, can produce in us the slightest 
feeling. Extreme enthusiasm, or powerful emotion of any 
kind, can make us altogether insensible even to physical 
injury. For this reason it is that the soldier on the field of 
battle is often wounded during the heat of the combat, without 
discovering it till exhausted by loss of blood. Numerous facts 



462 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

SENSATION— 

of a similar kind prove demonstrably, that a certain applica- 
tion and exercise of mind, on one side, is as necessary to the 
existence of sensation, as the occurrence of physical impulse, 
on the other." — Morell, Psychology, p. 107 ; Stewart, Phil. 
Essays, note r (it is G in last edit.) ; see also Outlines, sect. 14; 
Reid, Essays, Intell. Pow., essay L, chap. 1 ; Morell, Phil, of 
Religion, p. 7. 

SENSE, in psychology, is employed ambiguously — 1. For the 
faculty of sensitive apprehension. 2. For its act. 3. For its 
organ. 

Sense and Idea. — In the following passage from Shaftesbury 
(Moralists, part iii., sect. 2), sense is used as equivalent to idea ; 
" Nothing surely is more strongly imprinted on our minds, or 
more closely interwoven with our souls than the idea or sense 
of order and proportion." 

In like manner Dr. Hutcheson has said, u There is a natural 
and immediate determination to approve certain affections and 
actions consequent upon them ; or a natural sense of immediate 
excellence in them, not referred to any other quality perceiv- 
able by our senses or by reasoning." We speak of a determi- 
nation of blood to the head. This is a physical determination 
or tendency. Now, there may be a mental tendency, and 
this, in Dr. Hutcheson's philosophy, is called determination or 
sense. He denned a sense in this application of it u a determi- 
nation to receive ideas, independent of our will," and he 
enumerates several such tendencies or determinations, which 
he calls reflex senses. 

SENSES (REFLEX). — Dr. Hutcheson seems to have been in 
some measure sensible of the inadequacy of Mr. Locke's 
account of the origin of our ideas, and maintained, that in 
addition to those which we have by means of sensation and 
reflection, we also acquire ideas by means of certain powers 
of perception, which he called internal and reflex senses. 
According to his psychology, our powers of perception may 
be called direct or antecedent, and consequent or reflex. We 
hear a sound, or see colour, by means of senses which operate 
directly on their objects ; and do not suppose any antecedent 
perception. But we perceive the harmony of sound, and the 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 463 

SENSES— 

beauty of colour, by means of faculties which operate renexly, 
or in consequence of some preceding perception. And the 
moral sense was regarded by him as a faculty of this kind. 
Reflection, from which, according to Mr. Locke, we derive 
the simple ideas of the passions and affections of mind, was 
considered by Hutcheson as an internal sense or faculty, 
operating directly. But that faculty by which we perceive 
the beauty or deformity, the virtue or vice, of these passions 
and affections, was called by Hutcheson, a reflex, internal 
sense.— Illustrations of the Moral Sense, sect. 1; Inquiry con- 
cerning Moral Good and Evil, sect. 1 ; Mar. Phil, book i., 
chap. 4, sect. 4, and also sect. 5. 

SENSIBILITY or SENSITIVITY (to ctUhriKov) is now used 
as a general term to denote the capacity of feeling, as dis- 
tinguished from intellect and will. It includes sensations both 
external and internal, whether derived from contemplating 
outward and material objects, or relations and ideas, desires* 
affections, passions. It also includes the sentiments of the 
sublime and beautiful, the moral sentiment and the religious 
sentiment ; and, in short, every modification of feeling of 
which we are susceptible. By the ancient philosophers* the 
sensibility under the name of appetite was confounded with the 
will. The Scotch philosophers have analyzed the various forms 
of the sensibility under the name of active principles : but they 
have not gathered them under one head, and have sometimes 
treated of them in connection with things very different. 

SENSIBJLES, COJOION and PROPER (se?isile or sensibile, 
that which is capable of affecting some sense : that which is 
the object of sense). 

Aristotle distinguished sensibles into common and proper (De 
Anima, lib. ii., c. 2; lib. in., c. 1. Be Sensu et Sensili, c. 1). 
The common, those perceived by all or by a plurality of senses, 
were magnitude, figure, motion, rest, number. To these live, 
some of the schoolmen (but out of Aristotle) added place, dis- 
tance, position, and continuity.— Sir YV. Hamilton, He id's Works, 
p. 124, note. Aristotle admitted, however (De Anima, lib. iii., 
chaps. 1, 4), that the common sensibles are not properly objects 
of sense; but merely con-comitants or con-sequeuts of the per- 



464 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

SEWSIBIiES— 

ception of the proper sensibles. This is noticed by Hutcheson 
(Mor. Phil, book i., chap. 1), commended by Price (Review, 
p. 56, first edit.), by Mr. Stewart (Philosoph. Essays, pp. 31, 
46, 551, 4to), and by Eoyer Collard ((Euvres de Reid, torn, 
iii., p. 431). 

"Sensibile commune dicitur quod vel percipitur pluribus sen- 
sibus, vel ad quod cognoscendum, ab intellectu vel imaginatione 
desumitur occasio, ex variis sensibus; ut sunt figura, motus, 
ubicatio, duratio, magnitudo, distantia,numerus," &c. — Gompton 
Carleton, Phil. Univ. De Anima., diss. 16, lect. ii., sect. 1. 

The proper sensibles are those objects of sense which are 
peculiar to one sense ; as colour to the eye, sound to the 
ear, taste to the palate, and touch to the body. 

SENSISM, SENSUALISM, or SENSUIS3M, is the doctrine that 
all our knowledge is derived originally from sense. 

It is not the same as empiricism, though sometimes con- 
founded with it. Empiricism rests exclusively on experience, 
and rejects all ideas which are a priori. But all experience is 
not that of sense. Empiricism admits facts and nothing but 
facts, but all facts which have been observed. Sensism gives 
the single fact of sensation as sufficient to explain all mental 
phenomena. Locke is empirical, Condillac is sensual. 

Sensuism, "in the emphatic language of Fichte, is called 
^the dirt-philosophy. " — Sir Will. Hamilton, Discussions, 
38, see also p. 2.. — V. Empiricism, Ideology. 

SENSOEIUM (ulahrvi^iou), is the organ by which, or place in which, 
the sensations of the several senses are reduced to the unity 
of consciousness. According to Aristotle it was in all warm 
blooded animals the heart, and therefore so in man. According 
to modern philosophers the central organ is the brain, the pineal 
gland according to Descartes, the ventricles or the corpus cah 
losum according to others. 

Sensorium signifies not so properly the organ as the place 
of sensation. The eye, the ear, &c, are organs ; but they 
are not sensoria. Sir Isaac Newton does not say that 
space is a sensorium ; but that it is (by way of comparison), 
so to say, the sensorium, &c. — Clarke, Second Reply to 
Leibnitz. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 465 

SKNSORIIJM- 

Leibnitz adopted and defended (Answer to the Second Reply . 
of Clarke) the explanation of Rudolphus Goclenius, who, in his 
Lexicon Philosophicum, under Sensitorium, says, u Barbarum 
scholasticorurn, qui interduni sunt simiae Graecorum. Hi dicunt 
Al(74r t TV}oiQv. Ex quo illi fecerunt sensitorium pro sensorio, id 
est, organum sensationis." 
SENSUS COMMUNIS (xoivv) ott'afaaig). — This latter phrase was 
employed by Aristotle and the Peripatetics " to denote the 
faculty in which the various reports of the several senses are 
reduced to the unity of a common apperception." — Sir Will. 
Hamilton, Reid's Works, p. 757, note. 

This faculty had an organ which was called Sensorium Com- 
mune — q. v. 

Mr. Stewart (note d, to part ii. of Elements) says : — The 
sensus communis of the schoolmen denotes the power whereby 
the mind is enabled to represent to itself any absent object 
of perception, or any sensation which it has formerly experi- 
enced. Its seat was supposed to be that part of the brain 
(hence called the sensorium or sensorium commune) where 
the nerves from all the organs of perception terminate. Of 
the peculiar function allotted to it in the scale of our intel- 
lectual faculties, the following account is given by Hobbes : — 
t; Some say the senses receive the species of things and deliver 
them to the common sense ; and the common sense delivers them 
over to the fancy ; and the fancy to the memory ; and the 
memory to the judgment — like handing of things from one to 
another, with many words making nothing understood/' — Of 
Man, part i., chap. 2. 

Mr. Stewart says the sensus communis is perfectly syno- 
nymous with the word conception, that is, the power by 
which we represent an object of sense, whether present or 
absent. But it is doubtful whether sensus communis was 
applied by the schoolmen to the reproduction of absent objects 
of sense. 

SENTIMENT implies an idea (or judgment), because the will is not 
moved nor the sensibility affected without knowing. But an 
idea or judgment does not infer feeling or sentiment. — Busier, 
Log. ii., art. 9. 

2 ir 



466 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

SENTIMENT— 

" The word sentiment, in the English language, never, as I 
conceive, signifies mere feeling, but judgment accompanied with 
feeling* It was wont to signify opinion or judgment of any 
kind, but, of late, is appropriated to signify an opinion or judg- 
ment that strikes, and produces some agreeable or uneasy 
emotion. So we speak of sentiments of respect, of esteem, of 
gratitude ; but I never heard the pain of the gout, or any 
other severe feeling, called a sentiment. ," — Reid, Act. Pow., 
essay v., chap. 7. 

" Mr. Hume sometimes employs (after the manner of the 
French metaphysicians) sentiment as synonymous with, feeling ; a 
use of the word quite unprecedented in our tongue." — Stewart, 
Philosoph. Essays, last ed., note E. 

44 There are two sensibilities — the one turned towards nature 
and transmitting the impressions received from it, the other 
hid in the depths of our organization and receiving the im- 
pression of all that passes in the soul. Have we discovered 
truth— we experience a sentiment. Have we done a good 
deed — we experience a sentiment. A sentiment is but the echo 
of reason, but is sometimes better heard than reason itself. 
Sentiment, which accompanies the intelligence in all its move- 
ments, has, like the intelligence, a spontaneous and a reflective 
movement. By itself it is a source of emotion, not of know- 
ledge. Knowledge or judgment is invariable, whatever be our 
health or spirits. Sentiment varies with health and spirits. 
I always judge the Apollo Belvidere to be beautiful, but I 
do not always feel the sentiment of his beauty. A bright or 
gloomy day, sadness or serenity of mind, affect my sentiments, 
but not my judgment. 

u Mysticism would suppress reason and expand sentiment." — 
See Cousin, (Euvres, torn, ii., p. 96. 

Those pleasures and pains which spring up in connection 
with a modification of our organism or the perceptions of the 
senses, are called sensations. But the state of our mind, the 
exercise of thought, conceptions purely intellectual, are the 
occasion to us of high enjoyment or lively suffering ; for these 

* "This is too unqualified an assertion. The term sentiment is in English applied to 
the higher feelings."— Six William Hamilton. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 467 

8EIVTDIEXT- 

pleasures and pains of a different kind is reserved the name of 
sentiments. — Manuel de Philosophie, 8vo, Paris, 1846, p. 142. 

*• The word sentiment, agreeably to the use made of it by 
our best English writers, expresses, in my opinion, very happily 
those complex determinations of the mind which result from 
the co-operation of our rational powers and our moral feelings. 
We do not speak of a man's sentiments concerning a mechan- 
ical contrivance, or a physical hypothesis, or concerning any 
speculative question whatever, by which the feelings are not 
liable to be roused or the heart affected. 

" This account of the meaning of the word corresponds, I 
think, exactly with the use made of it by Mr. Smith in the title 
of his Theory (of Moral Sentiments):* — Stewart, PMlosoph. 
Essays, note d. 
Sentiment aud Opinion. — Dr. Beattie (Essay on Truth, part ii., 
chap. 1, sec. 1) has said, i4 that the true and the old English 
sense of the word sentiment, is a formed opinion, notion, or 
principle."' Dr. Reid, in his Essays on the Intell. Powers, speaks 
of the sentiments of Mr. Locke concerning perception; and of 
the sentiments of Arnauld, Berkeley, and Hume concerning 
ideas. 

The title of chap. 7, essay ii., of Reid on Intell. Powers, is 
Sentiments of Philosophers, &c, on which Sir W. Hamilton's 
note, p. 269, is, " Sentiment, as here and elsewhere employed 
by Eeid. in the meaning of opinion (sententia), is not to be 
imitated.*' 

'• By means of our sensations we feel, by means of our ideas 
we think : now a sentiment (from sent ire) is properly a judg- 
ment concerning sensations, and an opinion (from opinari) is a 
judgment concerning ideas : our sentiments appreciate external, 
and our opinions internal, phenomena. On questions of feel- 
ing, taste, observation, or report, we define our sentiments. 
On questions of science, argument, or metaphysical abstraction, 
we define our opinions. The sentiments of the heart. The 
opinions of the mind. It is my sentiment that the wine of 
Burgundy is the best in the world. It is my opinion that the 
religion of Jesus Christ is the best in the world. There is 
more of instinct in sentiment, and more of definition in opinion. 



468 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

SENTIMENT— 

The admiration of a work of art which results from first im- 
pressions, is classed with our sentiments; and when we have 
accounted to ourselves for the approbation, it is classed with 
our opinions.''' — Taylor, Synonyms. 
SIGN (signum, a mark). — The definition of a sign is u that which 
represents anything to the cognitive faculty." We have know- 
ledge by sense and by intellect, and a sign may be addressed 
to either or to both — as smoke, which to the eye and to the 
intellect indicates or signifies fire ; so that a sign has a twofold 
relation — to the thing signified and to the cognitive faculty. 

u Signs are either to represent or resemble things, or only to 
intimate and suggest them to the mind. And our ideas being 
the signs of what is intended or supposed therein, are in such 
sort and so far right, as they do either represent or resemble 
the object of thought, or as they do at least intimate it to the 
mind, by virtue of some natural connection or proper appoint- 
ment." — Oldfield, Essay on Reason, p. 184. 

Signs are divided into natural and conventional. A natural 
sign has the power of signifying from its own nature, so that 
at all times, in all places, and with all people it signifies the 
same thing, as smoke is the sign of fire. A conventional sign 
has not the power of signifying in its own nature, but supposes 
the knowledge and remembrance of what is signified in him to 
whom it is addressed, as three balls are the conventionally un- 
derstood sign of a pawnbroker's shop. 

In his philosophy Dr. Reid makes great use of the doctrine 
of natural signs. He arranges them in three classes, — 1. 
Those whose connection with the thing signified is established 
by nature, but discovered only by experience, as natural causes 
are signs of their effects ; and hence philosophy is called an 
interpretation of nature. 2. Those wherein the connection 
between the sign and thing signified is not only established by 
nature, but discovered to us by a natural principle without 
reasoning or experience. Of this class are the natural signs of 
human thoughts, purposes, and desires, such as modulations of 
the voice, gestures of the body, and features of the face, which 
may be called natural language, in opposition to that which is 
spoken or written. 3. A third class of natural signs compre- 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 469 

SIGN— 

hends those which, though we never before had any notion or 
conception of the thing signified, do suggest it and at once give 
us a conception and create a belief of it. In this way con- 
sciousness, in all its modifications, gives the conception and 
belief of a being who thinks — Coglto ergo sum, 

" As the first class of natural signs is the foundation of true 
philosophy, so the second is the foundation of the fine arts or 
of taste, and the hist is the foundation of common sense." — 
Rtid, Inquiry, chap. 5, sec. 3. 

The doctrine or science of signs has been called Sematology. 
And as the signs which the mind makes use of in order to 
obtain and to communicate knowledge are words : the proper 
and skilful use of words is in different ways the object of — 1. 
Grammar; 2. Logic; and 3. Rhetoric. — Smart, Sematology ', 
8vo, Lond., 1839. 

Berkeley. Minute Phil, dial, iv., sect. 7. 11. 12 : New 
Tk / Vision, sect. 144, 147 : Theory of Vision Vindicated) 

sect. 38-43. Hutcheson, Synopsis Metaphys.. part ii., chap. 1 ; 
. Phil., b. L. ch. 1. p. 5. De Gerando, Des Signes et 
Art de Penser ; Adam Smith. On the Formation of Lan- 
:-ge. 
SI3HJ.E. — V. Metaphor. 
SIX.— r. Evil. 

srvCERlTY implies singleness and honesty. — The Latin word 
•urn signifies what is without mixture, and has been 
thought to be compounded of sine cera, without wax. as pure 
honey is. 

44 Sincerity and sincere have a twofold meaning of great 
moral importance. Sincerity is often used to denote ' mere 
reality of conviction ; ' that a man actually believes what he 
professes to believe. Sometimes, again, it is used to denote 
1 imbiassed conviction.' or, at least, an earnest endeavour to 
shake off all prejudices, and all undue intluence of wishes and 
passions on the judgment, and to decide impartially." — 
.:•/;. L ?.. Append, i. 
si.\GiLAB. — V. Term. 

SOCIALISE. — In the various forms under which society has ex- 
roperty, individual industry and enterprise, and 



470 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

SOCIALISM— 

the rights of marriage and of the family, have been recognized. 
Of late years several schemes of social arrangement have been 
proposed, in which one or all of these principles have been 
abandoned or modified. These schemes may be comprehended 
under the general term of socialism. The motto of them all is 
solidarite. 

Communism demands a community of goods or property. 
Fourierism or Phalansterism would deliver men over to the 
guidance of their passions and instincts, and destroy all domestic 
and moral discipline. Saint Simonism or Humanitarianism 
holds that human nature has three great functions, that of the 
priesthood, science, and industry. Each of these is represented 
in a College, above which is the father or head, spiritual and 
temporal, whose will is the supreme and living law of the 
society. Its religion is pantheism, its morality materialism or 
epicurism, and its politics despotism. — Diet, des Sciences Philo- 
soph. 
SOCIETY (Oesire of). — " God having designed man for a soci- 
able creature, made him not only with an inclination, and 
under a necessity to have fellowship with those of his own 
kind, but furnished him also with language, which was to b 
the great instrument and common tie of society? — Locke, 
Essay on Hum. Understand., book iii., chap, 1. 

That the desire of society is natural to man, is argued hj 
Plato in the Second Book of his Republic. It is also hinted at 
in his dialogue entitled Protagoras. The argument is unfolded 
by Harris in his Dialogue concerning Happiness, sect. 12. 
Aristotle has said at the beginning of his Politics, — "The 
tendency to the social state is in all men by nature." The 
argument in favour of society from our being possessed of 
speech is insisted on by him, Polit., lib. i., cap. 2. Also by 
Cicero, De Legihus, lib. i., cap. 9 ; De Officiis, lib. i., cap. 16 ; 
De Nat. Deorum, lib. ii., cap. 59. 

In modern times, Hobbes argued that man is naturally 
an enemy to his fellow-men, and that society is a device to 
defend men from the evils which they would bring on one 
another. Hutcheson wrote his inaugural oration when 
admitted Professor of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow, in 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 471 

SOCIETY— 

opposition to Hobbes, De Naturali Hominum Socialitate, 
4to, Glasg., Typis Academ., 1730. 

Man is a social animal, according to Seneca (De Clem., 
i., 3). Lactantius says that lie is a social animal by nature 
(Div. Inst., vi., 10), in which he follows Cicero (De Offic, i., 
14). u Mankind have always wandered or settled, agreed 
or quarrelled, in troops and companies." — Ferguson, Essay on 
Hist, of Civ. Soc, p. 26. See also Lord Karnes, Hist, of Man, 
book ii., sketch 1 ; Filangieri, Scienza delta Legislazione, lib. 
L, c. 1. " La nature de l'homme le porte a vivre en societe. 
Quelle qu'en soit la cause, le fait se manifeste en toute occa- 
sion. Partout ou Ton a rencontre des honrmes, ils vivaient 
en troupes, en herdes, en corps de nation. Peut-etre est ce 
afin d'unir leur forces pour leur surete commune ; peut-etre 
afin de pourvoir plus aisement a leur besoins ; toujours il est 
vrai qu'il est dans la nature de l'homme de se reunir en 
societe, comme font les abeilles et plusieurs especes d'animaux ; 
on remarque des traits communs dans toutes ces reunions 
d'hommes, en quelque parti du monde qu'ils habit ent."— Say, 
Cours aVEcon. Polit., torn. vi. Compare Comte, ibid, torn, iv., 
p. 54. 

This gregarious propensity is different from the political 
capacity, which has been laid down as the characteristic of man. 
Society (Political, Capacity of). — Command and obedience, 
which are essential to government, are peculiar to mankind. 
Man is singular in commanding not only the inferior animals, 
but his own species. Hence men alone form a political com- 
munity. It has been laid down by Aristotle and others, that 
this difference is owing to the exclusive possession of reason 
and speech by man, and to his power of discriminating 
between justice and injustice (Polit., i., 2). Animals, says 
Cicero, are unfitted for political society, as being u rationis et 
orationis expertes." De Offic, i., 16. Separat hcec nos a 
grege mutorum. Juvenal, xv., 142-158. 

s01?iatojlooy.— V. Nature. 

SOPHISM, SO PHI ST UK, SOPHISTICAL, (SoQiopa., from 
aotpia, wisdom). — "They wore called sophisters, as who would 
say, Counterfeit wise men.' 1 — North, Plutarch, p. 96. 



472 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

SOPHISM- 

u For lyke wyse as though a Sophy ster woulde with a fonde 
argumente, prove unto a symple soule, that two egges were 
three, because that ther is one, and that ther be twayne, and 
one and twayne make three ; yt symple unlearned man, though 
he lacke learnying to soyle hys fonde argument, hath yet wit 
ynough to laugh thereat, and to eat the two egges himself, 
and byd the Sophy ster tak and eat the thyrde." — Sir T. More, 
Works, p. 475. 

" Sophism is a false argument. This word is not usually 
applied to mere errors in reasoning ; but only to those 
erroneous reasonings of the fallacy of which the person who 
maintains them is, in some degree, conscious ; and which he 
endeavours to conceal from examination by subtilty, and by 
some ambiguity, or other unfairness in the use of words." — 
Taylor, Elements of Thought. 

According to Aristotle, the sophism is a syllogismus conten- 
tiosus, a syllogism framed not for enouncing or proving the 
truth, but for disputation. It is constructed so as to seem to 
warrant the conclusion, but does not, and is faulty either in 
form or argument. — Trendelenburg, Lineamenta Log. Arista 
sect. 33, 8vo, Berol., 1842. 

See Reid, Account of Aristotle 1 s Logic, chap. 5, sect. 3. 

On the difference of meaning between Qi'horjoQos and 
ootptaryg, see Sheppard, Characters of Theophrastus, 8vo, 
Lond., 1852, p. 81, and p. 269. See also Grote, Hist of 
Greece, vol. viii., pp. 434-486, and the Cambridge Journal of 
Philosophy, No. 2.— - V. Fallacy. 
SORITES (dwgofr a heap) is an argument composed of an inde- 
terminate number of propositions, so arranged that the predi- 
cate of the first becomes the subject of the second, the predicate 
of the second the subject of the third, and so on till you come 
to a conclusion which unites the subject of the first with the 
predicate of the last. A is B, B is C, C is D, D is E, 
therefore A is E. 

This is the Direct or Common form of the Sorites. The 
Reversed form is also called the Goclenian, from Goclenius of 
Marburg, who first analyzed it about the end of the sixteenth 
century. It differs from the common form in two respects. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 473 

SORITES— 

1. Its premises are reversed ; and, 2. It begins with the 
premise containing the two terms which have the greatest 
extension, while the common form starts with the premise 
containing the terms which have the greatest comprehension. 
Thus— D is E, C is D, Bis C, A is B, therefore A 
isE. 
SOUIi O^tw, anima, soul). 

This word had formerly a wider signification than now. 
In the Second Book of his Treatise Usqi \pvxqg, Aristotle has 
given two definitions of it. In the first of these he calls it 
a the Entelechy, or first form of an organized body which has 
potential life." The word 'E^rgAg^g/a, which Dr. Keid begged 
to be excused from translating, because he did not know the 
meaning of it, is compounded of 'ivTt'heg, perfect ; ly^iv, to 
have ; and re^og, an end. Its use was revived by Leibnitz, 
who designated by it that which possesses in itself the principle 
of its own activity, and tends towards its end. According to 
his philosophy, the universe is made up of monads or forces, 
each active in itself, and tending by its activity to accomplish 
its proper end. In the philosophy of Aristotle, the word 
Entelechy, or first form, had a similar meaning, and denoted 
that which in virtue of an end constituted the essence of things, 
and gave movement to matter. When the soul then is called 
the Entelechy of an organized body having potential life, the 
meaning is, that it is that force or power by which life develops 
itself in bodies destined to receive it. 

Aristotle distinguished several forms of soul, viz., the nutri- 
tive or vegetative soul, by which plants and animals had 
growth and reproduction. The sensitive, which was the cause 
of sensation and feeling. The motive, of locomotion. The 
appetitive, which was the source of desire and will ; and the 
rational or reasonable, which was the seat of reason or in- 
tellect. These powers or energies of soul exist all in some 
beings ; some of them only in other beings ; and in some 
beings only one of them. That is to say, man possesses all ; 
brutes possess some ; plants one only. In the scholastic phi- 
losophy, desire and locomotion were not regarded as simple 
powers or energies — and only the nutritive or vegetative sou/, 



474 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

SOUIi— 

the sensitive or animal, and the rational or human were 
recognized. 

In the system of Plato, three forms or energies of soul were 
assigned to man. The rational, which had its seat in the head 
and survived the dissolution of the body — the irascible, which 
had its seat in the heart and was the spring of activity and 
movement, and the appetitive or concupiscible, which was the 
source of the grosser passions and physical instincts, and which 
died with the bodily organs with which it was united. A 
similar distinction between the forms or energies of the soul 
has been ascribed to Pythagoras, and traces of it are to be 
found in several of the philosophical systems of the East. 

Among modern philosophers in Germany, a distinction is 
taken between tyvyw (Seele) and Kvevpot, (Geist), or soul and 
spirit. According to G. H. Schubert, professor at Munich, 
and a follower of Schelling, the soul is the inferior part of our 
intellectual nature — that which shows itself in the phenomena 
of dreaming, and which is connected with the state of the brain. 
The spirit is that part of our nature which tends to the purely 
rational, the lofty, and divine. The doctrine of the natural and 
the spiritual man, which we find in the writings of St. Paul, 
may, it has been thought, have formed the basis upon which this 
mental dualism has been founded. Indeed it has been main- 
tained that the dualism of the thinking principle is distinctly 
indicated by the apostle when he says of the Word of God 
that it is able to "divide asunder soul and spirit.' 1 ' 1 The words 
in the original are '^v^'h and wivpu, and it is contended that 
by the former is meant the sentient or animal soul, and by the 
latter the higher or rational soul A similar distinction has 
been traced in the language of the Old Testament Scriptures, 
where one word is employed to denote the life that is common 
to man with the inferior animals, rm> and another word, rratM, 
to denote that inspiration of the Almighty which giveth him 
understanding, and makes of him a rational soul. It may 
be doubted, however, whether this distinction is uniformly 
observed, either in the Scriptures of the Old or of the New 
Testament. And it may be better for us, instead of attempting 
to define the soul a priori by its essence, to define it rather 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 475 

sour,— 

a posteriori by its operations. This also has been done by 
Aristotle, in a definition which has been generally adopted. 
He says, u The soul is that by which we live, feel, or perceive 
[will], move and understand." This is a full enumeration of 
all the energies which Aristotle assigned to the soul, and they 
are all manifested by the soul as it exists in man. Two of them, 
however, the energies of growth and motion, are usually treated 
of by the physiologist, rather than by the psychologist. At the 
same time, life and movement are not properties of matter ; 
and therefore they were enumerated by Aristotle as the pro- 
perties of soul — the soul nutritive, and the soul motive. "The 
animating form of a natural body is neither its organization, 
nor its figure, nor any other of those inferior forms which make 
up the system of its visible qualities ; but it is the power which, 
not being that organization, nor that figure, nor those quali- 
ties, is yet able to produce, to preserve, and to employ them." 
— Harris, Phil. Arrange., p. 279. This is what is now 
called the principle of life, and the consideration of it belongs 
to the physiologist — for, although in the human being life and 
soul are united, it is thought they may still be separate entities. 
In like manner some philosophers have contended that all 
movement implies the existence of a soul, and hence it is that 
the various phenomena of nature have been referred to an 
anima mundi, or soul of the universe. A modern philosopher 
of great name ( Jouffroy, in his Cours Prof esse a la Faculte des 
Lettres in 1837) enumerated among the energies of the human 
soul a special faculty of locomotion, and the power of origi- 
nating movement or change is ascribed to it when we call it 
active. The same view is taken by Adolphe Gamier in his 
Traite des Facultes de fame, iii. torn., 8vo, Par., 1852. Still, 
life and locomotion are not usually treated of as belonging to 
the soul, but rather as belonging to the bodies in which they 
are manifested. Hence it is that Dr. Reid, in his definition of 
the human soul, does not enumerate the special energies by 
which we live and move, but calls it that by which we think. 
"By the mind of a man," says he (Intell. Pow., essay i., 
chap. 1), "we understand that in him which thinks, remembers, 
reasons, wills. . . . We are conscious that we think, and 



476 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 



SOU!,— 

that we have a variety of thoughts of different kinds — such as 
seeing, hearing, remembering, deliberating, resolving, loving, 
hating, and many other kinds of thought — all which we are 
taught by nature to attribute to one internal principle ; and 
this principle of thought we call the mind or soul of many* It 
will be observed that Dr. Reid uses the word soul as synony- 
mous with mind. And, perhaps, no very clear nor important 
distinction can be taken between them. The plainest and most 
common distinction taken in the use of these words is, that in 
speaking of the mind of man we refer more to the various 
powers which it possesses, or the various operations which it 
performs : and in speaking of the soul of man we refer rather 
to the nature and destiny of the human being. Thus we say 
the immortality of the soul, and the powers of the mind.] A 
difference of meaning is more observable in our language be- 
tween the terms spirit and mind than between soul and mind. 
Both the latter terms may be and are applied indifferently to 
the mental principle as living and moving in connection with a 
bodily organism. But the term spirit properly denotes a being 
without a body. A being that never had a body is a pure 
spirit. A human soul when it has left the body is a disembodied 
spirit. Body is animated matter. Mind or soul is incorporated 
spirit. 

Into these verbal criticisms, however, it is not necessary to 
enter very minutely, because in psychological inquiries the 
term mind is commonly employed to denote that by which we 
feel, know, will, and reason — or in one word the principle of 

* Dr. Reid's is the psychological definition. But the soul is something different from 
the ego, from any of its faculties, and from the sum of them all. Some have placed its 
essence in thought, as the Cartesians— in sensation, as Locke and Condillac— or in the 
will or activity, like Maine de Biran. A cause distinguished from its acts, distinguished 
from its modes or different degrees of activity, is what we call a force. The soul then is 
a force, one and identical. It is, as defined by Plato {Be Leg., lib. 10), a self-moving 
force. Understanding this to mean bodily or local motion, Aristotle has argued against 
this definition.— Be Anima, lib. i., cap. 3. But Plato probably meant self-active to be the 
epithet characteristic of the mind or soul xivyjcrts lo&urhv xivourx. 

t Mind and the Latin mens were probably both from a root which is now lost in Europe, 
but is preserved in the Sanscrit menu, to know. The Greek voos or vov;, from the verb 
voi&>, is of similar origin and import. Mind is more limited than soul. Soul, beside* 
the rational principle, includes the living principle, and may be applied to animals and 
vegetables. Voluntary motion should not be denied to mind, as is very generally done. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 477 

SO re- 
thought. "We know this inward principle as manifested 
through a system of bodily organization with which it is united, 
and by which it is in many ways affected. But "we are taught 
by nature." says Dr. Reid, Ci or it is a primitive belief, that 
the thinking principle is something different from the bodily 
organism, and when we wish to signalize its peculiar nature 
and destiny, we call it soul or spirit" 
Spirit, ?Iind, and Soul — "The first denoting the animating 
faculty, the breath of intelligence, the inspiring principle, the 
spring of energy and the prompter of exertion : the second is 
the recording power, the preserver of impressions, the storer 
of deductions, the nurse of knowledge, and the parent of 
thought : the last is the disembodied, etherial, self-conscious 
being, concentrating in itself all the purest and most refined of 
human excellences, every generous affection, every benevolent 
disposition, every intellectual attainment, every ennobling virtue, 
and every exalting aspiration." — The Purpose of Existence, 
12mo, 1850, p. 79. 

"Animus, Anima, vpsvfiet and v^>; are participles. Artima 
est ab Animus. Animus vero est a Graeco *A»ept9s quod 
dici volunt quasi ' A~ t uo;< ab ' Aco sive ' A~:ui. quod est v*it»\ et 
Latinis a Spirando, Spiritns. Immo et Cvy^r est C^^o) quod 
Hesychius exponit visa." — Vossius — quoted from Home Tooke 
in Stewart's Philosoph. Essays, essay v. 

" Indulsit mnndi communis eonditor illis 
Tantum Animas; nobis Animum quoque."— Juv., Sat. 9. v. 134 

Animaj which is common to man and brutes, is that by which 
we live, move, and are invigorated : whilst Animus is that which 
is peculiar to mankind, and by which we reason. 

The triple division of man into roife, 'y v X,'<<, tap*, occurs fre- 
quently in ancient authors. Plato, lima us: Aristotle, Pol. 1. 
The Hellenist Jews seemed to have used the term rvevptm to 
denote what the Greeks called »o&, with an allusion to Gen. 
ii. 7. Josephus, Ant. J id., i.. c. 2. Thence in the Xew Test. 
we have. 1 Thess. v. 23, rvsvfca, \ *. — Heb. iv. 12, 

and Grotius, Note on Matthew xxvi. -il.— Fitzgerald, Notes 
on Aristotle's Etl.ics. p. 197. 

Yvx% soul, when considered separately. the prin- 



478 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY- 

gout,— 

ciple of life ; Not/?, raind, the principle of intelligence. Or, 
according to Plutarch, soul is the cause and beginning of 
motion, and mind of order and harmony with respect to 
motion. Together they signify an intelligent soul (hvovs 
•fyv%v)) which is sometimes called a rational soul ($vxv) 
KoyiKV)). Hence, when the nature of the soul is not in ques- 
tion, the word ipv^y is used to express both. Thus in the 
Phcedo the soul (^pvxv) is sa id sometimes to use the body for 
the examination of things ; at which times, according to Plato, 
it forms confused and imperfect notions of things, and is in- 
volved in error. But, when it examines things by itself, it 
arrives at what is pure and always existing, and immortal, and 
uniform, and is free from error. Here the highest operations 
of vov; u mind" are indisputably attributed to •fyvw, u soul." 
Aristotle describing \pv%v) (De Anima, lib. i., cap. 1), says that 
during anger, confidence, desire, &c, it participates with the 
body ; but that the act of understanding belongs peculiarly to 
itself." — Morgan, On Trinity of Plato, p. 54. 

SOUL of the: worud. — Anima Mundi — q. V. 

SPACE (spatium). — " Space, taken in the most general sense, 
comprehends whatever is extended, and may be measured by 
the three dimensions, length, breadth, and depth. In this sense 
it is the same with extension, Now, space, in this large signi- 
fication, is either occupied by body, or it is not. If it be not, 
but is void of all matter, and contains nothing, then it is space 
in the strictest signification of the word, and as it is commonly 
used in English philosophical language, being the same with 
what is called a vacuum." — Monboddo, Arte. Metaphys., b. 
iv., ch. 2. 

Mr. Locke has attempted to show that we acquire the idea 
of space by sensation, especially by the senses of touch and 
sight— book ii., ch. 4. But according to Dr. Eeid, " space is 
not so properly an object of sense as a necessary concomitant 
of the objects of sight and touch."— Intell. Pow\, essay ii., ch. 
19. It is when we see or touch body that we get the idea of 
space ; but the idea is not furnished by sense— it is a concep- 
tion, a priori, of the reason. Experience furnishes the occa- 
sion, but the mind rises to the conception by its native energy. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 479 

SPACE — 

This view has been supported by Cousin, Cours d'Histoire cle 
la PhilosopJiie au xviii. Siecle, 2 torn., 17 lecon ; and by 
Royer Collard, in Jouffroy's (Euvres du Reid, torn, iii., fragmen 
4, p. 424 ; torn, iv., fragmen 9, p. 338. 

u In the philosophy of Kant space and time are mere forms 
of the sensibility. By means of the external sense we repre- 
sent to ourselves everything as in space ; and by the internal 
sense all is represented in the relationship of time." — Analysis 
of Kant's Critick of Pure Reason, 8vo., Lond., 1844, p. 9. 

According to Kant, space is a subjective condition of the 
sensibility, the form of all external phenomena ; and as the 
sensibility is necessarily anterior in the subject to all real intui- 
tion, it follows that the form of all these phenomena is in the 
mind a priori. There can, then, be no question about space or 
extension but in a human or subjective point of view. It may 
well be said of all things, in so far as they appear existing 
without us, that they are enclosed in space ; but not that space 
encloses things absolutely, seen or not seen, and by any subject 
whatsoever. The idea of space has no objective validity, it is 
real only relatively to phenomena, to things, in so far as they 
appear out of us ; it is purely ideal in so far as things are taken 
in themselves, and considered independently of the forms of 
the sensibility. — Willm, Hist, cle la Philosoph. Allemande, torn, 
i., p. 142. 

u Space (German, Return) is a pure intuition which lies at the 
foundation of all external intuitions, and is represented as an 
infinitely given quantity. It is the formal condition of all 
matter, that is, without it, no matter, and consequently no corpo- 
real world, can be thought. Space and time have no transcen- 
dental objectivity, that is, they are in themselves non-existing, 
independent of our intuition-faculty ; but they have objectivity 
in respect of the empirical use, that is, they exist as to all 
beings that possess such a faculty of intuition as ourselves." — 
Haywood, Crit. of Pure Reason, p. 603. 

" According to Leibnitz, space is nothing but the order of 
things co-existing, as time is the order of things successive — 
and he maintained, ' that, supposing the whole system of the 
visible world to be moved out of the place which it presently 



480 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

SPACE— 

occupies, into some other portion of space, beyond the limits of 
this universe, still it would be in the same space, provided the 
order and arrangement of the bodies, with respect to one 
another, was continued the same.' Now, it is true, that bodies 
placed in any kind of order, must necessarily be in space ; but 
the order in which bodies are placed, and the space in which 
they are placed, must necessarily be distinct." — Monboddo, 
Anc. MetapJiys., book iv., chap. 1. Letters of Clarke and 
Leibnitz. 

" 1. Space is not pure nothing, for nothing has no capacity ; 
but space has the capacity of receiving body. 

" 2. It is not an ens rationis, for it was occupied by heaven 
and earth before the birth of man. 

u 3. It is not an accident inhering in a subject, i. e., body, for 
body changes its place, but space is not moved with it. 

a 4. It is not the superficies of one body surrounding 
another, because superficies is an accident ; and as superficies 
is a quantity it should occupy space ; but space cannot occupy 
space. Besides, the remotest heaven occupies space, and has 
no superficies surrounding it. 

u 5. It is not the relation or order with reference to certain 
fixed points, as east, west, north, and south. For if the whole 
world were round, bodies would change place and not their 
order, or they may change their order and not their place, if 
the sky, with the fixed points, were moved by itself. 
u 6 and 7. It is not body, nor spirit. 

" 8. It may be said with probability that space cannot be 
distinguished from the divine immensity, and therefore from 
God, It is infinite and eternal, which God only is. He is the 
place of all being, for no being is out of Him. And although 
different beings are in different places externally, they are all 
virtually in the divine immensity." — Derodon, Physic, pars. 1, 
ch.6. 

Bardili argued for the reality of time and space from the fact 
that the inferior animals perceive or have notions of them. 
Yet their minds, if they can be said to have minds, are not 
subject to the forms or laws of the human mind. 

But if space be something to the mind, which has the idea 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 481 

SPACE— 

of it, and to the bodies which exist in it, what is it? "Per- 
haps," says Dr. Eeid (nt supra), " we may apply to it what the 
Peripatetics said of their first matter, that whatever it is, it is 
potentially only, not actually." This, accordingly, is the view 
taken of it by a great admirer of the Peripatetic philosophy. 
" Space" says Lord Monboddo (Anc. Metaphys., book iv., 
chap. 2), " is but a relative ; and it is relative to body, and to 
body only, and this in three respects, first, as to its capacity of 
receiving body ; secondly, as to its connecting or limiting body ; 
and lastly, as to its being the distance between bodies that are 
separated. . . . Place is space occupied by body. It is 
different from body as that which contains is different from that 
which is contained. . . . Space, then, is place, potentially ; 
and when it is filled with body, then it is place, actually. 

Space, as containing all things, was by Philo and others 
identified with the Infinite. And the text (Acts xvii. 28) 
which says that "in God we live, and move, and have our 
being," was interpreted to mean that space is an affection or 
property of the Deity. Sir Isaac Newton maintained that God 
by existing constitutes time and space. u Non est duratio vel 
spatium sed durat et adest, et existendo semper et ubique, spatium 
et durationem constituit" Clarke maintained that space is an 
attribute or property of the Infinite Deity. Eeid and Stewart, 
as well as Cousin and Royer Collar cl, while they regard space 
as something real and more than a relation, have not positively 
said what it is. 

As space is a necessary conception of the human mind, as it 
is conceived of as infinite, and as an infinite quality, Dr. Clarke 
thought that from these views we may argue the existence of 
an infinite substance, to which this quality belongs. — See his 
Demonstration oftlie Being and Attributes of God, with Butler's 
Letters to him and the Answers. 

Stewart, Act. and Mor. Pow. ; Pownall, Intellectual Physics ; 
Brougham, Nat. Theology. 
SPECIES (from the old verb, specio, to see) is a word of differ- 
ent signification, in different departments of philosophy. 

In Logic, species was defined to be, u Id quod predicatur de 
pluribus numero differentibus, in quozstione quid est ?" And genus 
2i 



482 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

SPECIES— 

was defined to be, u Id quod predicatur depluribus differentibus 
specie, in qucestione quid est?" According to Derodon (Log., p. 
293), the adequate definition of genus is, u Res similes eodem 
nomine substantivo donates, et identificatce cum omnibus inferior- 
ibus diverso nomine substantivo donatis, et proprietate quadam 
incommunicabili distinctis" And of species, u Res similes eodem 
nomine substantivo donatce, et identificatce cum omnibus inferiori- 
bus diverso nomine substantivo donatis, et omnes proprietates ita 
similes habentibus, ut quodlibet possit habere atlributa aliorum 1 
nullum tamen liabeat actu idem sed tantum simile." 

In the process of classification (q. v.), the first step is the 
formation of a species. A species is a group of individuals 
agreeing in some common character, and designated by a 
common name. When two or more species are brought 
together in the same way, they are called a genus. 

u In Logic, genus and species are relative terms ; a concep- 
tion is called in relation to its superior, species — to its inferior, 
genus. The summum genus is the last result of the abstracting 
process, the genus which can never in turn be a species. The 
infima species is the species which cannot become a genus; 
which can only contain individuals, and not other species. 
But there can only be one absolute summum genus, whether 
we call it c thing,' ' substance,' or c essence.' And we can 
scarcely ever ascertain the infima species, because even in a 
handful of individuals, we cannot say with certainty that there 
are no distinctions on which a further subdivision into smaller 
classes might be founded." — Thomson, Outline of Laws of 
Thought, second edition, sect. 27. 

In Mathematics, the term species was used in its primitive 
sense of appearance ; and when the form of a figure was given, 
it was said to be given in species. 

Algebra, in which letters are used for numbers, was called, 
at one time, the specious notation. 

In Mineralogy, species is determined by perfect identity of 
composition ; the form goes for nothing. 

In the organized kingdoms of nature, on the contrary, species 
is founded on identity of form and structure, both external 
and internal. The principal characteristic of species in animate 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 483 

©PECJES— 

and vegetables, is the power to produce beings like them- 
selves, who are also productive. A species may be modified 
by external influences ; and thus give rise to races or varieties ; 
but it never abandons its own proper character to assume 
another. 

In Natural History, species includes only the following 
conditions ; viz., separate origin and distinctness of race, 
evinced by a constant transmission of some characteristic 
peculiarity of organization. — Dr. Prichard. 

"Species" according to Dr. Morton (author of Crania 
Americana), " is a 'primordial organic form." See a descrip- 
tion of species in Lyell's Geology, chap. 37. 

"By maintaining the unity of the human species (says A. v. 
Humboldt, Cosmos, vol. i., p. 355, Engl, trans.), we at the 
same time repel the cheerless assumption of superior and 
inferior races of men. 1 ' u This eminent writer appears in the 
passage quoted to exaggerate the extent of uniformity implied 
in a common species. It is unquestionable that mankind form 
one species in the sense of the natural historian ; but it does 
not follow from this fact that there are no essential hereditary 
differences, both physical and mental, between different 
varieties and races of men. The analogy of animal species 
would make it probable that such essential differences do exist ; 
for we see that, although all horses, dogs, oxen, sheep, &c, 
form respectively one species, yet each species contains 
varieties or races, which possess certain properties in different 
degrees, — which are more or less large, active, gentle, in 
telligent, hardy, and the like. If we are guided by the 
analogy of animal species, it is as probable that an English- 
man should be more intelligent than a negro, as that a 
greyhound should be more fleet than a mastiff, or an Arabian 
horse than a Shetland pony." — Sir G. C. Lewis, On Politics, 
chap. 27, sect. 10. 
Species in Perception. 

In explaining the process of external perception, or how we 
come to the knowledge of things out of and distant from us, 
it was maintained that these objects send forth species or 
images of themselves, which, making an impression on the 



484: VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

SPECIE S— 

bodily organs, next imprinted themselves on the mind and 
issued in knowledge. 

The species considered as the vicarious representative of the 
object, was called intentional. And as it affected both the 
intellect and the sense, was distinguished as sensible and 
intelligible. 

Species, as sensible, was distinguished as species impressa, as 
making an impression upon the sense — and species expressa^ 
in consequence of the sense or imagination, from the impres- 
sion, elaborating another species of the object. 

Species, as intelligible, was also distinguished into species im- 
pressa and species expressa. The species intelligibilis was called 
impressa, as it determined the faculty to the apprehension of 
this object, rather than of that. And it was called expressa, 
as in consequence of the operation of the faculty, knowledge 
of the object was attained to. 

According to some, the species as intelligible were congenite., 
and according to others they were elaborated by the intellect 
in the presence of the phantasms. 

The process of perception is thus described by Tellez 
(Summa Phil. Arist., Paris, 1645, p. 47). 

Socrates by his figure, &c, makes an impression upon the 
eye, and vision follows — then a species is impressed upon the 
phantasy, pliantasma impressum ; the phantasy gives the phan- 
iasma expressum, the intellectus agens purifies and spiritualizes 
it, so that it is received by the intellectus patiens 7 and the 
knowledge of the object is elicited. 

u The philosophy schools teach that for the cause of vision T 
the thing seen sendeth forth on every side a visible species 
(in English), a visible show, apparition, or aspect, or a being 
seen, the receiving of which into the eye is seeing. ....... 

Nay, for the cause of understanding also the thing understood 
sendeth forth an intelligible species, that is, an intelligible being 
seen, which, coming into the understanding, makes it under- 
stood." — Hobbes, Of Man, part i., chap. 1. 

For the various forms under which the doctrine of species 
has been held, see Reid, Intell. Pow., essay ii., chap. 8, with 
notes by Sir W. Hamilton, and note d* 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 485 

SPJECIES— 

The doctrine was not universally received during the Middle 
Ages. 

"Scholasticism had maintained that between the exterior 
bodies, placed before us, and the mind of man, there are 
Images which belong to the exterior bodies, and make more 
or less a part of them, as the st^co^oe. of Democritus, images 
or sensible forms which represent external objects by the 
conformity which they have with them. So the mind was 
supposed to be able to know spiritual beings only through 
the medium of intelligible species. Occam destroyed these 
chimeras, and maintained that there is nothing real but 
spiritual or material beings, and the mind of man, which 
directly conceives them. Gabriel Biel, a pupil of Occam 
(born at Spire, and died 1495), exhibited with much 
sagacity and clearness the theory of his master. Occam 
renewed, without knowing it, the warfare of Arcesilas against 
the Stoics; and he is in modern Europe the forerunner of 
Reid and of the Scotch school." — Cousin, Hist, of Mod. Phil.,, 
vol. ii., p. 26. 

Mons. Haureau (Exam, de Phil. Scolast., torn. L, p. 416) 
says of Durandus de St. Pourcain that he not only rejected 
intelligible species, but that he would not admit sensible species. 
To feel, to think, said he, are simple acts which result from the 
commerce of mind with an external object ; and this commerce 
takes place directly without anything intermediate. 
SPECIFICATION (The Principle of) IS, that beings the most 
like or homogeneous disagree or are heterogeneous in some 
respect. It is the principle of variety or difference. 
Specification (Process ©f) u is the counterpart of generaliza- 
tion. In it we begin with the most extensive class, and 
descend, step by step, till we reach the lowest. In so doing 
we are thinking out objects, and thinking in attributes. In 
generalization we think in objects and think out attributes." — 
Spalding, Log., p. 15. 

SPECULATION (specular, to regard attentively).— u To speculate 
is, from premisses given or assumed, but considered unques- 
tionable, as the constituted point of observation, to look 
abroad upon the whole field of intellectual vision, and thence 



486 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

SPECULATION- 

to decide upon the time form and dimension of all which meets 
the view." — Marsh, Prelim. Essay to Aids to Reflection, p. 13. 
" Speculation stands opposed to reflection, a method of 
thought which has to do with something given, and appro- 
priates the same by continued analysis and synthesis of its 
elements. If speculative stand thus opposed to reflective 
thinking, it must necessarily belong to the former not to set 
out from anything given as its subject, but from determinations 
which thought finds in itself as the necessary and primary 
ground of all being as of all thinking. In this sense, all 
speculative thinking is of an a priori, and all reflective thinking 
of an a posteriori nature." — Miiller, Doctrine of Sin, Introd. 

It is that part of philosophy which is neither practical nor 
experimental. The speculative part of philosophy is meta- 
physics. The speculative part of mathematics is that which 
has no application to the arts. 

SPIRITUALISM (spiritus, spirit) is not any particular system 
of philosophy, but the doctrine, whether grounded on reason, 
sentiment, or faith, that there are substances or beings which 
are not cognizable by the senses, and which do not reveal 
themselves to us by any of the qualities of matter, and which 
we therefore call immaterial or spiritual* Materialism denies 
this. But spiritualism does not deny the existence of matter, 
and, placing itself above materialism, admits both body and 
spirit. Hence it is called dualism, as opposed to the denial 
of the existence of matter. The idealism of Berkeley and 
Malebranche may be said to reduce material existences to 
mere phenomena of the mind. Mysticism, whether religious 
or philosophical, ends with resolving mind and matter into 
the Divine substance. Mysticism and idealism tend to pan- 
theism, materialism to atheism. Spiritualism, grounded upon 
consciousness, preserves equally God, the human person, 
and external nature, without confounding them and with- 
out isolating the one from the other. — Diet, des Sciences 
Philosophy 

SPONTANEITY. — Leibnitz (Opera, torn, i., p. 459) explains 
u spontaneity to mean the true and real dependence of our 
actions on ourselves." Heineccius calls it u the faculty of 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOFHY. 487 

SPONTAIVEITIT— 

directing one's aim to a certain end." — Tumbull. Trans., vol. 
L. p. 35. It is a self-active causality. 
SPONTANEOUS is opposed to reflective* Those operations of 

mind which are continually going on without any effort or 
intention on our part are spmttirieoHS. When we exercise a 
volition, and make an effort vf attention to direct our mental 
energy in any particular way. or towards any particular object, 
we are said to reflect, or to observe. 

STANDARD OF VIRTUE. — Standard is that by which other 
things are rated or valued. " Labour alone, therefore, never 
varying in its own value, is alone the ultimate and real standard 
by which commodities can at all times and places be estimated 
and compared."' — Smith. Wealth of Xat., b. i.. c. 5. 

A standard is something set up by which to measure the 
quantity or quality of some other thing. Xow rectitude is the 
foundation of virtue. The standard of virtue is some law or 
rule by which rectitude can be measured. To the law of God, 
and to the testimony of an enlightened conscience, if they agree 
not, it is because there is no truth nor lightness in them. Xow 
the will of God, as declared by the constitution and course of 
nature, or as revealed by His Word, is a standard by which we 
may measure the amount of rectitude, in action or disposition. 
According as they agree, in a greater or less degree, with the 
indications of the divine will, in the same proportion are they 
right, or in accordance with rectitude. The standard of 
virtue, then, is the will of God. as declared in His Word, or 
some law or rule deduced from the constitution of nature and 
the course of providence. The foundation of virtue is the 
ground or reason on which the law or rule rests. — V. Crite- 
rion. 

STATE (States of Ml**). — "The reason why madness, idiotism, 
ecc. are called states* of mind, while its acts and operations are 
not. is because mankind have always conceived the mind to be 
passive in the former and active in the latter." — Iveid's Cor- 
respohdencc, p. 85. 

• •■ r a a, and principally by Necessitarian 

philosophers, been applied to all modifications of mind indifferently."— Sir William 
Hamilton. 



488 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

STATE— 

Such were the views of Dr. Reid. But since his day, a 
change has passed over the language of Scottish psychology. 
No change of phraseology, because no change of doctrine, is to 
be found in the writings of Mr. Stewart. But in those of Dr. 
Brown the difference is manifest. Instead of speaking of the 
mind as operating, or as acting, or as energizing, he delights 
rather to speak of it as exhibiting phenomena, and as passing 
through, or existing in, different states. This phraseology has 
been by many accepted and applauded. It is thought that by 
adopting it, we neither affirm nor deny the activity of the mind, 
and thus proceed to consider its manifestations, unembarrassed 
by any questions as to the way in which these manifestations 
are brought about. But it may be doubted if this phraseology 
leaves the question, as to the activity of the mind, entire and 
untouched. 

If Dr. Brown had not challenged the common opinion, he 
would not, probably, have disturbed the language that was 
previously in common use ; although it must be admitted that 
he was by no means averse to novel phrases. At all events, 
the tendency of his philosophy is to represent the mind in all 
its manifestations as passive — the mere recipient of changes 
made upon it from without. Indeed, his system of philosophy, 
which is sensational in its principles, may be said to take the 
bones and sinews out of the mind, and to leave only a soft and 
yielding mass, to be magnetized by the palmistry of matter. 
That the mind in some of its manifestations is passive, rather 
than active, is admitted ; and in reference to these, there can 
be no objection to speak of it as existing in certain states, or 
passing into these states. But in adopting, to some extent, 
this phraseology, we must not let go the testimony which is 
given in favour of the activity of mind, by the use and structure 
of language. Language is not the invention of philosophers. 
It is the natural expression of the human mind, and the expon- 
ent of those views which are natural to it. Now, the phrase 
operations of mind, being in common use, indicates a common 
opinion that mind is naturally active. That opinion may be 
erroneous, and it is open to philosophers to show, if they can, 
that it is so. But the observation of Dr. Keid is, that " until 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 489 

STATE— 

it is proved that the mind is not active in thinking, but merely 
passive, the common language with regard to its operations 
ought to be used, and ought not to give place to a phraseology 
invented by philosophers, which implies its being merely 
passive." 

And in another place (Jntell. Pow., essay i., chap. 1), he 
says, u There may be distinctions that have a real foundation, 
and which may be necessary in philosophy, which are not made 
in common language, because not necessary in the common 
business of life. But I believe no instance will be found of a 
distinction made in all languages, which has not a just founda- 
tion in nature." 

If any change of phraseology were expedient, the phrase 
"manifestations of mind" would touch less upon the question 
of its activity. But in the language of Dr. Reid — " The mind 
is from its very nature, a living and active being. Everything 
we know of it implies life and active energy ; and the reason 
why all its modes of thinking are called its operations, is, that 
in all or in most of them, it is not merely passive, as body is, 
but is really and properly active. In all ages, and in all lan- 
guages, ancient and modern, the various modes of thinking 
have been expressed by words of active signification, such as 
seeing, hearing, reasoning, willing, and the like. It seems, 
therefore, to be the natural judgment of mankind, that the 
mind is active in its various ways of thinking ; and for this 
reason they are called its operations, and are expressed by 
active verbs." 

One proof of the mind being active in some of its operations 
is, that these operations are accompanied with effort, and 
followed by languor. In attention, we are conscious of effort ; 
and the result of long continued attention is languor and ex- 
haustion. This could not be the case if the mind was altogether 
passive — the mere recipient of impressions made — of ideas 
introduced. — V. Operations of Mind. 

STATISTICS. — " The observation, registration, and arrangement 
of those facts in politics which admit of being reduced to a 
numerical expression has been, of late years, made the subject 
of a distinct science, and comprehended under the designation 



490 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

STATISTICS— 

of statistics. Both the name and the separate treatment of the 
subject were due to Achenwall,* who died in 1772. Upon the 
nature and province of the science of statistics, see the Intro- 
duction to the Journal of the London Statistical Society, vol. i., 
1839. This science, it is there remarked, does not discuss 
causes, nor reason upon probable effects ; it seeks only to 
collect, arrange, and compare, that class of facts which alone (?) 
can form the basis of correct conclusions with respect to social 
and political government. . . . Its peculiarity is, that it 
proceeds wholly by the accumulation and comparison of facts, 
and does not admit of any kind of speculation. . . . The 
statist commonly prefers to employ figures and tabular exhibi- 
tions." — Sir G. C. Lewis, Method of Observ. in Polity chap. 
5, sect. 10. 

STOICS (from utool, a porch).— Zeno opened a school at Athens, 
in the u variegated porch," so called from the paintings of 
Polygnotus, with which it was adorned, whence his adherents 
were called " philosophers of the porch " — Stoics. — Schwegler, 
Hist, of Phil, p. 138. 

" From the Tusculan Questions" says Bentham, u I learnt 
that pain is no evil. Virtue is of itself sufficient to confer 
happiness on any man who is disposed to possess it on these 
terms. 

" This was the sort of trash which a set of men used to 
amuse themselves with talking, while parading backwards and 
forwards in colonnades, called porches : that is to say, the 
Stoics, so called from gtom, the Greek name for a porch. In 
regard to these, the general notion has been, that compared 
with our cotemporaries in the same ranks, they were, generally 
speaking, a good sort of men ; and assuredly, in all times, 
good sort of men, talking all their lives long nonsense, in an 
endless variety of shapes, never have been wanting ; but that 
from talking nonsense in this or any other shape, they or their 
successors have, in any way or degree, been the better, this is 
what does not follow." — DeontoL, vol. i., p. 302. 

* Godefroy Achenwall was born at Elbingen, in Prussia, in 1719, studied at Jena, 
Halle, and Leipsic, established himself at Marburg in 1746, and in 1748, where he soon 
afterwards obtained a chair. He was distinguished as Professor of History and Statis- 
tics. But he also published several works on the Law of Nature and of Nations. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 491 

STOICS— 

Their philosophy of mind may be judged of by the motto 
assigned to them — Nihil est in intellects, nisi prius fuerit in 
sensu. Yet, along with this, they held that the mind had the 
power of framing general ideas, but these were derived from 
experience. Zeno compared the hand open to sensation ; half 
closed upon some object to judgment 5 fully closed upon it 
to WavToKjicc, KotTa'hY}7rTtx,y]. comprehensive judgment, or syn- 
thesis of judgment. And when the one hand grasped the 
other to enable it to hold more firmly, this was universal and 
definitive synthesis or science. In physics they said all things 
were made of cause and matter. In morals their maxim was 
44 to live agreeably to nature." Mind ought to govern matter. 
And the great struggle of life was, to lift the soul above the 
body, and the evils incident to it. Their two great rules were 
az/g^o^andaxs^oy — sustine,abstine. — Diet, des Sciences Philosopli. 

Heinsius (Dan.), Philosopli. Stoica, 4to, Leyd., 1627 ; Lipsius 
(Justus), Manuduclio ad Stoicam Philosophy 4to, Antw., 1664; 
Gataker (Thomas), Dissertatio de Discipline, Stoica, prefixed 
to his edition of Antoninus, 4to, Camb., 1643. 
SUBJECT, OBJECT, SUBJE€TEVE, OBJECTIVE.— " We 
frequently meet," says Dr. Reid, " with a distinction between 
things in the mind and things external to the mind. The powers, 
faculties, and operations of the mind, are things in the mind. 
Everything is said to be in the mind, of which the mind is the 

subject Excepting the mind itself and things in 

the mind, all other things are said to be external." 

By the term subject Dr. Reid meant substance, that to 
which powers belong or in which qualities reside or inhere. 
The distinction, therefore, which he takes between things in the 
mind and things external to the mind, is equivalent to that 
which is expressed among continental writers by the ego and 
the non ego, or seZ/and not self. The mind and things in the 
mind constitute the ego. u All other things," says Dr. Reid, 
u are said to be external." They constitute the non ego. 

" In the philosophy of mind, subjective denotes what is to bo 
referred to the thinking subject, the ego ; objective, what be- 
longs to the object of thought, the non ego." — Sir W. Hamilton, 
Discussions. Lond., 8vo, 1852, p. 5, note. 



492 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

SSTEJECT— 

" The subject is properly, id in quo ; tlie object, id circa quod. 
Hence, in psychological language, the subject absolutely is the 
mind that knows or thinks, i. e., the mind considered as the 
subject of knowledge or thought — the object, that which is 
known or thought about. The adjectives subjective and ob- 
jective are convenient, if not indispensable expressions." — Sir 
Will. Hamilton, ReioVs Works, p. 221, note. 

In note b to ReioVs Works, p. 108, Sir Will. Hamilton 
explains how these terms should have come into common use 
in mental philosophy. 

u All knowledge is a relation, a relation between that which 
knows (in scholastic language, the subject in which knowledge 
inheres) and that which is known (in scholastic language, the 
object about which knowledge is conversant) ; and the contents 
of every act of knowledge are made up of elements, and regu- 
lated by laws, proceeding partly from its object and partly from 
its subject. 'Now., philosophy proper is principally and primarily 
the science of knowledge — its first and most important problem 
being to determine, W T hat can we know ? that is, what are the 
conditions of our knowing, whether these lie in the nature of 
the object, or in the nature of the subject of knowledge. 

" But philosophy being the science of knowledge ; and the 
science of knowledge supposing, in its most fundamental and 
thorough going analysis, the distinction of the subject and 
object of knowledge ; it is evident that to philosophy the subject 
of knowledge would be by pre-eminence, the subject, and the 
object of knowledge, the object. It was therefore natural that 
the object and objective, the subject and subjective, should be 
employed by philosophers as simple terms, compendiously to 
denote the grand discrimination, about which philosophy was 
constantly employed, and which no others could be found so 
precisely and promptly to express." 

For a disquisition on subject, see Tappan, Log., sect. 4. — V. 
Objective. 
SUBJECT I VISUI is the doctrine of Kant, that all human know- 
ledge is merely relative ; or rather that we cannot prove it 
to be absolute. According to him, we cannot objectify the 
subjective ; that is, we cannot prove that what appears true to 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 493 

SUBJECTIVISM- 
US must appear true to all intelligent beings ; or that with 
different faculties what now appears true to us might not 
appear true. But to call our knowledge relative is merely 
calling it human or proportioned to the faculties of a man ; 
just as the knowledge of angels may be called angelic. Our 
knowledge may be admitted to be relative to our faculties of 
apprehending it ; but that does not make it less certain. — 
RelcTs Works, by Sir W. Hamilton, p. 513. 

SUBIilME (The). — u In reflecting on the circumstances by which 
sublimity in its primitive sense is specifically distinguished, the 
first thing that strikes us is, that it carries the thoughts in a 
direction opposite to that in which the great and universal law 
of terrestrial gravitation operates." — Stewart, Phil. Essays, 
Essay on the Sublime. 

A sense of grandeur and sublimity has been recognized as one 
of the reflex senses belonging to man. It is different from the 
sense of the beautiful, though closely allied to it. Beauty charms, 
sublimity moves us, and is often accompanied with a feeling re- 
sembling fear, while beauty rather attracts and draws us towards it. 
There is a sublime in nature, as in the ocean or the thunder 
— in moral action, as in deeds of daring and self-denial — and 
in art, as in statuary and painting, by which what is sublime in 
nature and in moral character is represented and idealized. 

Kant has accurately analyzed our feelings of sublimity and 
beauty in his Critique du Judgment; Cousin, Sur le Beau, Ic 
Vrai, et le Bon ; Burke, On the Sublime and Beautiful; Addison, 
Spectator, vol. vi. Dr. Parr addressed an Essay on the Sublime 
to D. Stewart. 

SUBSISTEIVTIA is a substantial mode added to a singular nature, 
and constituting a suppositum along with it. It means, 1. The 
thing itself, the suppositum ; hence we call the three persons of 
the Trinity three hypostases or subsistences. 2. The mode 
added to the singular nature to complete its existence ; this is 
the metaphysical sense. 3. The act of existing per se. 

" Subsistentia est ' substantias completion qua carcnt rcrum 
naturalium partes a reliquis divulsce. Subsistens dicitur suppo- 
situm aut hypostasis. Persona est suppositum rationeprccditum" 
— Hutcheson, Metaphys., pars. I, cap. 5. 



494 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

SUBSTANCE is " that which is and abides." 

It may be derived from sabsistens (ens per se subsistens), that 
which subsists of or by itself; or from substans (id quod sub- 
stat), that which lies under qualities — the vxoxei/usvou of the 
Greeks. But in Greek, substance is denoted by ovaia. — so that 
which truly is, or essence, seems to be the proper meaning of 
substance. It is opposed to accident ; of which Aristotle has 
said (Metaphys., lib. vii.) that you can scarcely predicate of it 
that it is anything. So also Augustine (De Trinitate, lib. vii., 
c. 4) derives substance from subsistendo rather than from sub- 
stando. " Sicut ab eo quod est esse, appellatur essentia : ita ab 
eo quod est subsistere, substantiam dicimus." But Locke pre- 
fers the derivation from substando. He says (Essay on Hum. 
Understand., book ii., ch. 23), u The idea, then, we have, to 
which we give the name of substance, being nothing but the 
supposed but unknown support of these qualities we find 
existing, which we imagine cannot subsist, sine re substante, 
without something to support them, we call that support 
substantia ; which, according to the true import of the word, is, 
in plain English, standing under or upholding." 

Dr. Hampden (Bampton Led., vii., p. 337), has said, si Sub- 
stance, in its logical and metaphysical sense, is that nature of a 
thing which may be conceived to remain when every other 
nature is removed or abstracted from it — the ultimate point in 
analyzing the complex idea of any object. Accident denotes 
all those ideas which the analysis excludes as not belonging to 
the mere being or nature of the object." 

Substance has been defined, ens per se existens; and accident, 
ens existens non in se sed in alio. 

Our first idea of substance is probably derived from the con- 
sciousness of self — the conviction that, while our sensations, 
thoughts, and purposes are changing, we continue the same. 
We see bodies also remaining the same as to quantity or ex- 
tension, while their colour and figure, their state of motion or 
of rest, may be changed. 

Substances, it has been said, are either primary, that is sin- 
gular, individual substances ; or secondary* that is genera and 

* Haureau {Phil. Scholast, torn, i., p. 60), says that what has been called second 
substance is just one of its modes or a species. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 495 

SUBSTANCE— 

species of substance. Substances have also been divided into 
complete and incomplete, finite and infinite, &c. But these are 
rather divisions of being. Substance may, however, be properly 
divided into matter and spirit, or that which is extended and 
that which thinks. — V. Essence. 
Substance (The Principle of) denotes that law of the human 
mind by which every quality or mode of being is referred to a 
substance. In everything which we perceive or can imagine as 
existing, we distinguish two parts, qualities variable and mul- 
tiplied, and a being one and identical ; and these two are so 
united that we cannot separate them in our intelligence, nor 
think of qualities without a substance. Memory recalls to 
us the many modes of our mind ; but amidst all these modes 
we believe ourselves to be the same individual being. So in 
the world around us the phenomena are continually varying ; 
but we believe that these phenomena are produced by causes 
which remain, as substances, the same. And as we know our- 
selves to be the causes of our own acts, and to be able to 
change the modes of our own mind, so we believe the changes 
of matter to be produced by causes which belong to the sub- 
stance of it. And underlying all causes, whether of finite mind 
or matter, we conceive of one universal and absolute cause, one 
substance, in itself persistent and upholding all things. 
SUJBSUJIPTIOIV (sub, under; sumo, to take). — " When we are 
able to comprehend why or how a thing is, the belief of the 
existence of that thing is not a primary datum of conscious- 
ness, but a subsumption under the cognition or belief which 
affords its reason." — Sir Will. Hamilton, Reid's Works, note A. 
To subsume is to place any one cognition under another 
as belonging to it. In the judgment, " all horses are animals," 
the conception " horses " is subsumed under that of a animals." 
The minor proposition is a subsumption under the major when 
it is placed first. Thus, if one were to say, " Xo man is wise 
in all things," and another to respond, " But you are a man," 
this proposition is a subsumption under the former. And the 
major being assumed ex concesso, and the minor subsumed as 
evidence, the conclusion follows, u You are not wise in all 
things." 



496 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

SUCCESSION. — "By reflecting on the appearance of various ideas 
one after another in our understanding, we get the notion of 
succession." — Locke, Essay on Hum. Understand., b. ii., ch. 14. 
He traces our notion of duration or time to the same origin ; or 
rather he confounds succession and duration, the measure with 
the thing measured. According to Cousin and others, the notion 
of time is logically antecedent and necessary to the notion of suc- 
cession. Events take place in time, as bodies exist in space. 
In the philosophy of Kant, time is not an empirical notion, but 
like space, a form of the sensibility. — V. Duration, Time. 

SUFFICIENT REASON (Doctrine of). — " Of the principle of 
the sufficient reason, the following account is given by Leib- 
nitz, in his controversial correspondence with Dr. Clarke : 
— a The great foundation of mathematics is the principle of 
contradiction or identity ; that is, that a proposition cannot be 
true and false at the same time. But, in order to proceed 
from mathematics to natural philosophy, another principle is 
requisite (as I have observed in my Theodicced), I mean, the 
principle of the sufficient reason; or, in other words, that 
nothing happens without a reason why it should be so, rather 
than otherwise. And, accordingly, Archimedes was obliged, in 
his book De Equilibrio, to take for granted, that if there be a 
balance, in which everything is alike on both sides, and if 
equal weights are hung on the two ends of that balance, the 
whole will be at rest. It is because no reason can be given 
why one side should weigh down rather than the other. Now 
by this single principle of the sufficient reason, may be demon- 
strated the being of a God, and all the other parts of meta- 
physics or natural theology ; and even, in some measure, 
those physical truths that are independent of mathematics, 
such as the dynamical principles, or the principles of forces." 
— See Reid, Act. Poiv., essay iv., chap. 9. — V. Reason (De- 
termining). 

The principle of sufficient reason as a law of thought is 
stated by logicians thus — u Every judgment we accept must 
rest upon a sufficient ground or reason." From this law follow 
such principles as these : — 1 . Granting the reason, we must 
grant what follows from it. On this, syllogistic inference 
depends. 2. If all the consequents are held to be true, the 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 497 

SUFFICIENT— 

reason must be true. 3. If we reject the consequent we must 
reject the reason. 4. If we admit the consequent, we do not of 
necessity admit the reason, as there may be other reasons or 
causes of the same effect. 

Thomson. Outline of Laics of Though', p. 296. But accord- 
ing to Mr. Mansel, Prolegam. Log., p. 198, " The principle 
of .sufficient reason is no law of thought, but only the state- 
ment that every act of thought must be governed by some law 
or other.'* 
SUGGESTION (suggero, to bear or place under, to prompt). 

'•It is the received doctrine of philosophers, that our notions 
of relations can only be got by comparing the related ideas : 
but it is not by having first the notions of mind and sensation 
and then comparing them together, that we perceive the one 
to have the relation of a subject or substratum, and the other 
that of an act or operation : on the contrary, one of the related 
things, viz.. sensation, suggests to us both the correlate and 
the relation. 

" I beg leave to make use of the word suggestion, because I 
know not one more proper, to express a power of the mind, 
which seems entirely to have escaped the notice of philo- 
sophers, and to which we owe many of our simple notions 
which are neither impressions nor ideas, as well as many 
original principles of belief." — Eeid. Enquiry, ch. 2. s. 7. 

To this power Dr. Eeid refers our natural judgments or 

inciples of common sense. Mr. Stewart has expressed sur- 
prise that Reid should have apologized for introducing a word 
which had already been employed by Berkeley, to denote 
those intimations which are the results of experience and 
habit (Disstrt.. p. 1G7. second ed.). And Sir W. Hamilton 
has shown that in the more extensive sense of Reid the word 
had been used by Tertullian : who. speaking of the universal 
belief of the sours immortahty. has said (De Anima, c. 2), 
•* Natura pleraque suggeruntur, quasi de publico sensu quo 
itare clignatus est." — Reid's Works, p. 3, note. 

The word suggestion is much used in the philosophy of 
Dr. Thomas Brown, hi a sense nearly the same as t!.. 
sinned to association, by other philosophers. He calls judg- 
2 K 



498 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

SFCJOESTION— 

ment, relative suggestion. Hutcheson {Log. Compend., cap. 1) 
says, u Sensus est interims qui suggerit prcecipue intellectiones 
pur as ; quce conscientia, aut reflectendi vis dicitur" It is not 
so properly consciousness or reflection which gives the new 
ideas, but rather the occasion on which these ideas are sug- 
gested. It is when we are conscious and reflect on one thing, 
some other thing related to it, but not antecedently thought, 
is suggested. 

Locke said, " Simple ideas, the materials of all our know- 
ledge, are suggested and furnished to the mind only by those 
two ways mentioned above, viz., Sensation and Reflection. — 
Essay on Hum. Understand., b. ii., ch. 2, § 2. Cumberland 
had said before him, " Utrobique intelligimus propositions quas- 
dam immutabilis veritatis. Hujusmodi aliquot veritates a rerum 
hominumque natura mentions humanis necessario suggeri, hoc est 
quod a nobis affirmatur, hoc idem ab adversariis non minus 
diserte denegatur." — De Legg. Nat., c. i., sect. 1. 

SU1CIBE (sui and cwdes, self-murder) is the voluntary taking away 
of one's own life. The Stoics thought it was not wrong to do 
so, when the pains and inconveniences of our lot exceeded its 
enjoyments and advantages. But the command, " Thou shalt 
not kill," forbids suicide as well as homicide. It is contrary to 
one of the strongest instincts of our nature, that of self-pre- 
servation — and at variance with the submission which we owe 
to God, and the duties incumbent upon us towards our fellow- 
creatures. All the apologies that can be offered for it are 
futile. 

Aristotle, Ethic, lib. iii., cap. 7, lib. v., cap. 11; Hermann, 
Disputatio de Autocheiria et philosophice et ex legibus Romanis 
considerata, 4to, Leips., 1809 ; Madame de Stael, Reflexions 
sur le Suicide; Stoeudlin, Hist, des Opinions et des Doctrines sur 
le Suicide, 8vo, Goetting., 1824 ; Tissot, Manie du Suicide ; 
Adams, On Self-murder ; Donne, Biathanatos. 

SUPERSTITION (so called, according to Lucretius, quod sit 
super stantium rerum, i. e., coelestium et divinarum quce supra 
nos stant, nimis et superfluus timor, Aulus Gellius, Noct. Attic, 
lib. 10), is not an u excess of religion" (at least in the ordi- 
nary sense of the word excess), " as if any one could have too 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 499 

SIJPE RSTITION— 

much of true religion, but any misdirection of religious feeling ; 
manifested either in showing religious veneration or regard to 
objects which deserve none; that is, properly speaking, the 
worship of false gods ; or, in the assignment of such a degree, 
or such a kind of religious veneration to any object, as that 
object, though worthy of some reverence, does not deserve ; or 
in the worship of the true God through the medium of improper 
rites and ceremonies." — Whately, On Bacon, p. 155. 

" Superstition, " says Dr. Hartley, "may be denned a mistaken 
opinion concerning the severity and punishments of God, mag- 
nifying these in respect to ourselves or others. It may arise 
from a sense of guilt, from bodily indisposition, or from erro- 
neous reasoning." 
SUPRA-NATURAIilSM {supra, above ; natura, nature) is the 
doctrine that in nature there are more than physical causes in 
operation, and that in religion we have the guidance not merely 
of reason but of revelation. It is thus opposed to Naturalism 
and to Rationalism — q. v. In Germany, where the word 
originated, the principal Supra-naturalists are Tholuck, Heng- 
stengberg, Guericke, &c. 
SYIiJLOGTSM (avTiKoyi^uos, a putting together of judgments, or 
propositions or reasonings). 

This word occurs in the writings of Plato, in the sense of 
judging or reasoning ; but not in the technical sense assigned 
to it by Aristotle. 

According to Aristotle (Prior. Analyt., lib. i., cap. 1, 
sect. 7), " a syllogism is a speech (or enunciation) (v^oyog) in 
which certain things (the premises) being supposed, something 
different from what is supposed (the conclusion) follows of 
necessity; and this solely in virtue of the suppositions them- 
selves." 

" A syllogism is a combination of two judgments necessitating 
a third judgment as the consequence of their mutual relation.' 1 
— Mansel, Prolegom. Log., p. 61. 

Euler likened the syllogism to three concentric circles, of 
which the first contained the second, which in its turn contained 
the third. Thus, if A be predicable of all B, and B of all C, it 
follows necessarily that A is also predicable of C. 



500 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

SYMiOGISUI— 

In a syllogism, the first two propositions are called the pre- 
mises ; because they are the things premised or put before ; 
they are also called the antecedents : the first of them is called 
the major and the second the minor. The third proposition, 
which contains the thing to be proved, is called the con- 
clusion or consequent ; and the particle which unites the 
conclusion with the premises is called the consequentia or con- 
sequence.* 

In a syllogism, u the conclusion having two terms, a subject 
and a predicate, its predicate is called the major term, and its 
subject the minor term. In order to prove the conclusion, each 
of its terms is, in the premises, compared with the third term, 
called the middle term. By this means one of the premises 
will have for its two terms the major term and the middle 
term ; and this premise is called the major premise, or the 
major proposition of the syllogism. The other premise must 
have for its two terms the minor term and the middle term ; 
and it is called the minor proposition. Thus the syllogism 
consists of three propositions, distinguished by the names of 
the major, the minor, and the conclusion; and although each of 
these has two terms, a subject and a predicate, yet there are 
only three different terms in alL The major term is always the 
predicate of the conclusion, and is also either the subject or 
predicate of the major proposition. The minor term is always 
the subject of the conclusion, and is also either the subject or 
predicate of the minor proposition. The middle term never 
enters into the conclusion, but stands in both premises, either 

* Thus:— 

" Every virtue is laudable f 
Diligence is a virtue ; 
Wherefore diligence is laudable. 
" The two former propositions are the premises or antecedents, the last is the conclusion 
or consequent, and the particle wherefore is the consequentia or consequence. 
"The consequent may be true and the consequence false. 
11 What has parts is divisible ; 
The human soul has parts; 
Wherefore the human soul is divisible. 
"The consequent may be true although the consequence is false. 
" Antichrist will be powerful, 
Therefore he will be impious. 
" His impiety will not flow from his power." 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 501 

STJLiiOeisra-- 

in the position of subject or of predicate." — Reid, Account of 
Aristotle's Logic, chap. 8, sect. 2. 

According to the various positions which the middle term 
may have in the premises, syllogisms are said to be of various 
figures. And as all the possible positions of the middle term 
are only four, the regular figures of the syllogism are also four ; 
and a syllogism is said to ba drawn in the first, second, third, or 
fourth figure according to the position of its middle term. 

There is another division of syllogisms according to their 
moods. The mood of a syllogism is determined by the quality 
and quantity of the propositions of which it consists. There 
are sixty-four moods possible in every figure. And the theory 
of the syllogism requires that we show what are the par- 
ticular moods in each figure, which do or do not form a just 
and conclusive syllogism. The legitimate moods of the first 
figure are demonstrated from the axiom called Dictum de omni 
et de nidlo. The legitimate moods of the other figures are 
proved by reducing them to some mood of the first. — Christian 
Wolf, Smaller Logic, ch. 6. 

According to the different kinds of propositions employed 
in forming them, syllogisms are divided into Categorical and 
Hypothetical. Categorical syllogisms are divided into Pure 
and Modal. Hypothetical syllogisms into Conditional and 
Disjunctive, 

In the Categorical syllogism, the two premisses and the con- 
elusion are all categorical propositions. 

One premiss of a Conditional syllogism is a conditional pro- 
position ; the other premiss is a categorical proposition, and 
either asserts the antecedent or denies the consequent. In 
the former case, which is called the modus ponens, the conclusion 
infers the truth of the consequent ; in the latter case, which 
is called the modus tollens, the conclusion infers the falsity of the 
antecedent. The general forms of these two cases are, u If A 
is, B is ; but A is, therefore B is ; and if A is, B is not ; but B 
is, therefore xV is not." "If what we learn from the Bible is 
true, we ought not to do evil that good may come ; but what 
we learn from the Bible is true, therefore we ought not to do 
evil that good mav come." 



502 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

SYI^OOISM— 

In the Disjunctive syllogism, we commence with a disjunctive 
judgment, and proceed either by asserting the truth of one 
member of the division, and thence inferring the falsity of all 
the rest, which is called the modus ponens, or else by asserting 
the falsity of all the members but one, and hence inferring the 
truth of that one, which latter method is called the modus 
tollens. The general form of these two cases will be, u Either 
A is, or B is, or C is ; but A is ; therefore neither B is, nor C 
is." And " Either A is, or B is, or C is ; but neither B is, nor 
C is ; therefore A is." Either the Pope is infallible, or there 
is at least one great error in the Komish Church ; but the Pope 
is not infallible, therefore there is at least one great error in the 
Romish Church. — Solly, Syll. of Logic. 

Locke, Essay on Hum. Understand., 1 ®* iv., chap. 17 ; Aldrich, 
Wallis, Watts, and other authors on Logic. 
symbol.- V. Myth. 
SYMPATHY (av^Trxhtot, fellow-feeling). 

"This mutual affection which the Greeks call sympathy., 
tendeth to the use and benefit of man alone." — Holland, 
Pliny, b. xx., Proem. 

" These sensitive cogitations are not pure actions springing 
from the soul itself, but compassion (sympathy) with the body.'* 
— Cudworth, Immut. Mor., book iii., chap. 1, p. 18. 

u Pity and compassion are words appropriated to signify our 
fellow-feeling with the sorrow of others. Sympathy, though its 
meaning was, perhaps, originally the same, may now, however, 
without much impropriety, be made use of to denote our 
fellow-feeling with any other passion whatever." — Smith, Theory 
of Mor. Sent., part i., sect. 1. 

Sympathy with sorrow or suffering is compassion ; sympathy 
with joy or prosperity is congratulation. — V. Antipathy. 
8YNCAT1CJOKEMATIC— V. CatEGOREMATIC. 
SYNCRETISM (cvu^viria^os, from aw, together, and *£jjt/£<», to 
behave like a Cretan). — " The Cretans are herein very observ- 
able, who, being accustomed to frequent skirmishes and fights, 
as soon as they were over, were reconciled and went together. 
And this was it which they commonly called a Syncretism" — 
Plutarch, Of Brotherly Love. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 503 

SYNCRETISM— 

Syncretism is opposed to Eclecticism in philosophy. Eclec- 
ticism (g. v.) while it takes from various systems, does so on 
the principle that the parts so taken, when brought together, 
have a kind of congruity and consistency with one another. 
Syncretism is the jumbling together of different systems or 
parts of systems, without due regard to their being consistent 
with one another. It is told of a Roman consul that, when he 
arrived in Greece he called before him the philosophers of the 
different schools, and generously offered to act as moderator 
between them. Something of the same kind was proposed by 
Charles V.* in reference to the differences between Protestants 
and Papists ; as if philosophy, and theology which is the highest 
philosophy, instead of being a search after truth, were a mere 
matter of diplomacy or compromise — a playing at protocols. 
But Syncretism does not necessarily aim at the reconciling of 
the doctrines which it brings together ; it merely places them in 
juxtaposition. 

Philo of Alexandria gave the first example of syncretism, 
in trying to unite the Oriental philosophy with that of the 
Greeks. The Gnostics tried the same thing with the doc- 
trines of the Christian religion. About the beginning of the 
seventeenth century, George Calixtus, a German theologian, 
attempted to set down in one common creed the belief of the 
Papists and the Protestants ; but succeeded only in irritating 
both. To him and his partizans the name Syncretist seems to 
have been first applied.— See Walch's Introduction to Contro- 
versies of Lutheran Church. Similar efforts were made to 
unite the metaphysics of Aristotle with those of Descartes. 
And the attempts which have frequently been made to recon- 
cile the discoveries of geology with the cosmogony of Moses 
deserve no name but that of syncretism, in the sense of its 
being " a mixing together of things which ought to be kept 
distinct." On the evils of syncretism, see Sewell (Christ. 
Morals, chap. 9), who quotes as against it the text, Deut. 

* After his retiring from the toils of empire, Charles V. employed his leisure in con- 
structing time-pieces, and on experiencing the difficulty of making their movements 
synchronous, he is said to have exclaimed, in reference to the attempt to reconcile Tro- 
testants and Papists, "How could I dream of making two great bodies of men think 
alike when I cannot make two clocks to go alike I " 



504 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

SYNCRETISM— 

xxii. 9, " Thou shalt not sow thy vineyard with divers 
seeds" &c. 

§YNDEBESIS (avv licapta, to divide, to tear asunder) was used 
to denote the state of conviction or remorse in which the 
mind was when comparing what it had done with what it 
ought to have done. — Aquinas, Summce Theolog., pars prima, 
qusest. 79, articulus 12. 

SYNEIIMKSIS (a v veil wi g, joint knowledge; from uvu and ei'la). 
— Conscience, as giving knowledge of an action in reference 
to the law of right and wrong, was called the Witness who 
accused or excused. The operations of conscience were repre- 
sented by the three members of a syllogism ; of which the 
first contained the law, the second the testimony of the 
witness, and the third the decision of the judge. But con- 
science not only pronounces sentence ; it carries its sentence 
into effect. — V. Synderesis. 

He who has transgressed any of the rules of which con- 
science is the repository, is punished by the reproaches of 
his own mind. He who has obeyed these rules, is acquitted 
and rewarded by feelings of complacency and self- approba- 
tion. — V. Synteresis. 

SYNTEHESIS (ovvTqoiiats, the conservatory; from ovvtyi^g*). — 
Conscience, considered as the repository of those rules, or 
general maxims, which are regarded as first principles in 
morals, was called by this name among the early Christian 
moralists, and was spoken of as the law or lawgiver. 

SYNTHESIS (ovvfavtg, a putting together, composition) u con- 
sists in assuming the causes discovered and established as 
principles, and by them explaining the phenomena proceeding 
from them and proving the explanation." — ISTewton, Optics. 

u Every synthesis which has not started with a complete 
analysis ends at a result which, in Greek, is called hypothesis ; 
instead of which, if synthesis has been preceded by a sufficient 
analysis, the synthesis founded upon that analysis leads to a 
result which in Greek is called system. The legitimacy of 
every synthesis is directly owing to the exactness of analysis ; 
every system which is merely an hypothesis is a vain system ; 
every synthesis which has not been preceded by analysis is a 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 505 

SYNTHESIS— 

pure imagination : but at the same time every analysis which 
does not aspire to a synthesis which may be equal to it, is an 
analysis which halts on the way. On the one hand, synthesis 
without analysis gives a false science ; on the other hand, 
analysis without synthesis gives an incomplete science. An 
incomplete science is a hundred times more valuable than a 
false science ; but neither a false science nor an incomplete 
science is the ideal of science. The ideal of science, the ideal 
of philosophy, can be realized only by a method which com- 
bines the two processes of analysis and synthesis" — Cousin, 
Hist. Mod. Phil., vol. L, pp. 277, 278.— V. Analysis, Method, 
System. 

SYSTElTi {avdTYipct ; from trvi/taryifAi, to place together) is a full 
and connected view of all the truths of some department of know- 
ledge. An organized body of truth, or truths arranged under 
one and the same idea, which idea is as the life or soul which 
assimilates all those truths. No truth is altogether isolated. 
Every truth has relation to some other. And we should try 
to unite the facts of our knowledge so as to see them in their 
several bearings. This we do when we frame them into a 
system. To do so legitimately we must begin by analysis and 
end with synthesis. But system applies not only to our know- 
ledge, but to the objects of our knowledge. Thus we speak 
of the planetary system, the muscular system, the nervous 
system. We believe that the order to which we would reduce 
our ideas has a foundation in the nature of things. And it is 
this belief that encourages us to reduce our knowledge of 
things into systematic order. The doing so is attended with 
many advantages. At the same time a spirit of systematizing 
may be carried too far. It is only in so far as it is in accor- 
dance with the order of nature that it can be useful or sound. 
Condillac has a Traite des Systemes, in which he traces their 
causes and their dangerous consequences. 
System, Economy, or Constitution. — u A System, Economy, or 
Constitution, is a one or a whole, made up of several parts, 
but j^et that the several parts even considered as a whole do 
not complete the idea, unless in the notion of a whole you 
include the relations and respects which these parts have to 



506 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

SYSTEM— 

each other. Every work, both of nature and of art, is a 
system; and as every particular thing, both natural and arti- 
ficial, is for some use or purpose out of and beyond itself, 
one may add to what has been already brought into the 
idea of a system, its conduciveness to this one or more ends. 
Let us instance in a watch — suppose the several parts of it 
taken to pieces, and placed apart from each other ; let a man 
have ever so exact a notion of these several parts, unless he 
considers the respects and relations which they have to each 
other, he will not have anything like the idea of a watch. 
Suppose these several parts brought together and any how 
united : neither will he yet, be the union ever so close, have an 
idea which will bear any resemblance to that of a watch. But 
let him view these several parts put together, or consider them 
as to be put together in the manner of a watch ; let him form a 
notion of the relations which these several parts have to each 
other — all conducive in their respective ways to this purpose, 
showing the hour of the day ; and then he has the idea of a 
watch. Thus it is with regard to the inward frame of man. 
Appetites, passions, affections, and the principle of reflection, 
considered merely as the several parts of our inward nature, 
do not give us an idea of the system or constitution of this 
nature ; because the constitution is formed by somewhat not 
yet taken into consideration, namely, by the relations which 
these several parts have to each other, the chief of which is 
the authority of reflection or conscience. It is from consider- 
ing the relations which the several appetites and passions in 
the inward frame have to each other, and, above all, the 
supremacy of reflection or conscience, that we get the idea of the 
system or constitution of human nature. And from the idea itself 
it will as fully appear, that this our nature, t. 6., constitution, 
is adapted to virtue, as from the idea of a watch it appears 
that its nature, i. e., constitution or system, is adapted to 
measure time." — Butler, Preface to Sermons.— V. Method, 
Theory. 



VOCABULAKY OF PHILOSOPHY. 507 

TABILA RASA (a tablet made smooth). — The ancients were in 
use to write upon tablets covered with soft wax, on which the 
writing was traced with the sharp point of the stylus, or iron 
pen. When the writing had served its purpose, it was effaced 
by the broad end of the stylus being employed to make the 
wax smooth. The tablet was then, as at first, tahula rasa, 
ready to receive any writing which might be put upon it. 
In opposition to the doctrine of innate ideas (q. v.) the mind 
of man has been compared to a tabula rasa, or a sheet of 
white paper — having at first nothing written upon it, but 
ready to receive what may be inscribed on it by the hand of 
experience. This view is maintained by Hobbes, Locke, and 
others. On the other hand, Lord Herbert of Cherbury com- 
pares the mind to a book all written over within, but the 
leaves of which are closed, till they are gradually opened by 
the hand of experience, and the imprisoned truths or ideas 
set free. Leibnitz, speaking of the difference between Locke 
and him, says: — u The question between us is whether the 
soul in itself is entirely empty, like a tablet upon which 
nothing has been written (tabula rasa), according to Aristotle 
{Be Anima, lib. hi., cap. 4, sect. 14) and the author of the 
Essay on Hum. Under, (book ii., ch. 1, sect. 2) ; and whether 
all that is there traced comes wholly from the senses and 
experience ; or whether the soul originally contains the prin- 
ciples of several notions and doctrines, which the external 
objects only awaken upon occasions, as I believe with Plato." 
Professor Sedgwick, instead of likening the mind to a sheet 
of white paper, would rather liken it to what in the art of 
dyeing is called a u prepared blank," that is, a piece of cloth 
so prepared by mordaunts and other appliances, that when 
dipped into the dyeing vat it takes on the colours intended, 
and comes out according to an expected pattern. 

u The soul of a child is yet a white paper unscribbled with 
observations of the world, wherewith, at length, it becomes a 
blurred note-book." — Bishop Earle. 

"If it be true that the mind be a blank apart from the 
external creation, yet how elaborately must that apparent 
blank be prepared, when by simply bringing it into the light 
and warmth of the objective, it glows with colours not of earth, 



508 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

TABULA RASA— 

and shows that from the first it had been written over with a 
secret writing by the hand of God." — Harris, Man Primeval, 
chap. 3. 

TACT. — "By tact we mean an inferior degree of talent — a skill 
or adroitness in adapting words or deeds to circumstances, 
involving, of course, a quick perception of the propriety of 
circumstances. It is also applied to a certain degree of me- 
chanical skill." — Moffat, Study of ^Esthetics, p. 206. 

TALENT. — " By talent, in its distinctive meaning, we understand 
the power of acquiring and adroitly disposing of the materials 
of human knowledge, and products of invention in their already 
existing forms, without the infusion of any new enlivening 
spirit. It looks no farther than the attainment of certain 
practical ends, which experience has proved attainable, and 
the dexterous use of such means as experience has proved to 
be efficient. 

" Talent values effort in the light of practical utility; genius 
always for its own sake, labours for the love of labour. Talent 
may be acquired. . . . Genius always belongs to the 
individual character, and may be cultivated, but cannot be 
acquired." — Moffat, Study of ^Esthetics, p. 204. 

" Talent describes power of acquisition, excellence of memory; 
genius describes power of representation, excellency of fancy ; 
intellect describes power of inference, excellence of reason." 
— Taylor, Synonyms. 

" Talent lying in the understanding is often inherited; genius 
being the action of reason and imagination, rarely, or never." — 
S. T. Coleridge. 

TASTE (POWERS, OR PRINCIPLES OF).— 

" His tasteful mind enjoys 
Alike the complicated charms, which glow 
Thro' the wide landscape."— Cowper, Power of Harmony, b. ii 

11 That power of the mind by which we are capable of dis- 
cerning and relishing the beauties of nature, and whatever 

is excellent in the fine arts, is called Taste Like 

the taste of the palate, it relishes some things, is disgusted 
with others ; with regard to many, is indifferent or dubious ; 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 509 

TASTE— 

and is considerably influenced by habit, by associations, and by 
opinion. . . . 

"By the objects of Taste, I mean those qualities and attri- 
butes of things which are, by nature, adapted to please a good 
taste. Mr. Addison {Spectator, vol. vi.) and Dr. Akenside 
{Pleasures of Imagination) after him. has reduced them to three 
— to wit. Novelty, Grandeur, and Beauty" — q. v. — Reicl, Intel!. 
Poic, essay Yiii., chap. 1 and 2. 

The best definition of Taste was given by the editor of 
Spenser (Mr. Hughes), when he called it a kind of extem- 
pore judgment. Burke explained it to be an instinct which 
immediately awakes the emotions of pleasure or dislike. Aken- 
side is clear as he is poetical on the question : — 

" What, then, is Taste but those internal powers, 
Active, and strong, and feelingly alive 
To each fine impulse ? a discerning sense 
Of decent and sublime, with quick disgust 
From things deformed, or disarranged, or gross, 
In species ? This, nor gems, nor stores of gold, 
Nor purple state, nor culture, can bestow, 
But God alone, when first his sacred hand 
Imprints the secret bias of the soul." 

Pleasures of 1 'ma gin. , b. iii., 1. 523. 

;i We may consider Taste, therefore, to be a settled habit of 
discerning faults and excellencies in a moment — the mind ? s inde- 
pendent expression of approval or aversion. It is that faculty 
by which we discover and enjoy the beautiful, the picturesque, 
and the sublime in literature, art, and nature." — Pleasures, Sw. 
of Literature, 12mo, London, 1851, pp. 55, 56. 

The objects of Taste have also been classed as the Beauti- 
ful, the Sublime, and the Picturesque — q. v. The question is 
whether these objects possess certain inherent qualities which 
may be so called, or whether they awaken pleasing emotions 
by suggesting or recalling certain pleasing feelings formerly 
experienced in connection or association with these objects. 
The latter view has been maintained by Mr. Alison in his 
Essay on Taste, and by Lord Jeffrey in the article u Beauty n in 
the Encyclopaedia Britannica. 

Lord Jeffrey has said, " It appears to us, then, that objects 



510 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

TASTE— 

are sublime or beautiful — first, when they are the natural signs 
and perpetual concomitants of pleasurable sensations, as the 
sound of thunder, or laughter, or, at any rate, of some lively 
feeling or emotion in ourselves, or in some other sentient 
beings ; or secondly, when they are the arbitrary or accidental 
concomitants of such feelings, as ideas of female beauty ; or 
thirdly, when they bear some analogy or fancied resemblance 
to things with which these emotions are necessarily con- 
nected." All poetry is founded on this last — as silence and 
tranquillity — gradual ascent and ambition — gradual descent 
and decay. 

Mr. Stewart has observed that u association of ideas can 
never account for a new notion or a pleasure essentially differ- 
ent from all others." — Elements, ch. 5, part ii., p. 364, 4to. 

Gerard, Essay on Taste; Sir Joshua Reynolds, Discourses 
before Royal Society ; Burke, On Sublime and Beautiful ; Payne 
Knight, Enquiry into Principles of Taste; Hume, Essay on 
Standard of Taste; Brown, Lectures, 77; Stewart, PMlosoph. 
Essays, part ii., Relative to Taste; Sir T. L. Dick, Essay 
on Taste, prefixed to Price on the Picturesque, 8vo, 1842. 
— V. ^Esthetics. 

TEUEOIiOOY (re'hog, an end; Koyog, discourse) is the doctrine 
of Final Causes— q. v. It does not constitute a particular 
department of philosophy ; as the end or perfection of every 
being belongs to the consideration of that branch of philo- 
sophy in which it is included. But teleology is the philosophi- 
cal consideration of final causes, generally. 

TEMPERAMENT (tempero, to moderate, to season). — " There 
are only two species of temperament. The four well known 
varieties, and the millions which are less known, are merely 
modifications of two species, and combinations of their modi- 
fications. These are the active and the passive forms ; and 
every other variety may be conveniently arranged under 
them."* 

* Lavater, Zimmerman, and Von Hildebrandt adopt a similar classification. The 
author of the treatise on "Diet," included among the works of Hippocrates, takes the 
same view of temperaments; as likewise the Brunonian school, which maintained two 
antagonist, sthenic and asthenic, states. 



YOCABULAPwY OF PHILOSOPHY. 511 

TEMPERAMENT- 

" As character comprises the entire sphere of the educated 
will, so temperament is nothing else than the sum of our natural 
inclinations and tendencies. Inclination is the material of the 
will, developing itself, when controlled, into character, and when 
controlling, into passions. Temperament is, therefore, the root 
of our passions ; and the latter, like the former, may be dis- 
tinguished into two principal classes. Intelligent psychologists 
and physicians have always recognized this fact ; the former 
dividing temperaments into active and passive, the latter classi- 
fying the passions as exciting and depressing. 

" We would apply the same statement to the affections or 
emotions. The temperament commonly denominated sanguine 
or choleric is the same as our active species ; and that known 
as the phlegmatic, or melancholy, is the same as our passive 
one." — Feuchtersleben, Dietetics of the Soul, 12mo, Lon., 1852, 
p. 85. 

Bodily constitutions, as affecting the prevailing bias of the 
mind, have been called temperaments ; and have been dis- 
tinguished into the sanguine, the choleric, the melancholic, 
and the phlegmatic. To these has been added another, called 
the nervous temperament. According as the bodily con- 
stitution of individuals can be characterized by one or other 
of these epithets, a corresponding difference will be found in 
the general state or disposition of the mind ; and there will be 
a bias, or tendency to be moved by certain principles of action 
rather than by others. 

Mind is essentially one. But we speak of it as having a 
constitution, and as containing certain primary elements ; and, 
according as these elements are combined and balanced, there 
may be differences in the constitution of individual minds, 
just as there are differences of bodily temperaments ; and these 
differences may give rise to a disposition or bias, in the one 
case, more directly than in the other. According as intellect, 
or sensitivity, or will, prevails in any individual mind, there 
will be a correspondent bias resulting. 

But, it is in reference to original differences in the Primary 
desires, that differences of disposition are most observable. 
Any desire, when powerful, draws over the other tendencies 



512 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

TEMPERAMENT— 

of the mind to its side ; gives a colour to the whole character 
of the man, and manifests its influence throughout all his 
temper and conduct. His thoughts run in a particular channel, 
without his being sensible that they do so, except by the 
result. There is an under-current of feeling, flowing continu- 
ally within him, which only manifests itself by the direction in 
which it carries him. This constitutes his temper.* Dispo- 
sition is the sum of a man's desires and feelings. 

In the works of Galen (torn, iv., Leips., 1822) is an essay 
to show, Quod animi mores corporis temper amenta sequuntur. 
See also Feuchtersleben, Medical Psychology. 

TEMPERANCE (temperantia) is moderation as to pleasure. 
Aristotle (Ethic, lib. iii., cap. 10) confined it chiefly to the 
pleasures of touch, and of taste in a slight degree. Hence, 
perhaps, Popish writers in treating of the vices of intemper- 
ance or luxury, dwell much on those connected with the senses 
of touch and taste. By Cicero the Latin word temperantia 
was used to denote the duty of self-government in general. 
Temperantia est quce ut in rebus expetendis aut fugiendis ratio- 
nem seqaamur monet. 

Temperance was enumerated as one of the four cardinal 
virtues. It may be manifested in the government and regu- 
lation of all our natural appetites, desires, passions, and affec- 
tions, and may thus give birth to many virtues, and restrain 
from many vices. As distinguished from fortitude, it may be 
said to consist in guarding against the temptations to pleasure 
and self-indulgence ; while fortitude consists in bearing up 
against the evils and dangers of human life. 

TENDENCY (tendo, to stretch towards). — " He freely moves and 
acts according to his most natural tendence and inclination." — 
Scott, Christ. Life, pt. i., c. 1. 

" But if at first the appetites and necessities, and tendencies 
of the body, did tempt the soul, much more will this be done 
when the body is miserable and afflicted." — Taylor, Of Repent., 
c. 7, § 1. — V. Inclination. 

TERM (ooog, terminus, a limit). — A term is an act of appre- 

* The balance of our animal principles, I think, constitutes what we call a man's 
natural temper.— Reid, Act, Pow., essay iii., part ii., chap. 8. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 513 

TERM— 

hension expressed in language ; also the subject or predicate 
of a proposition. " I call that a term into which a proposition 
is resolved, as for instance, the predicate and that of which it 
is predicated." — Arist., Prior. Analyt., lib. L, cap. 1. 

" As lines terminate a plane and constitute figure, so its 
terms are the limits of a proposition. A proposition consists 
of two terms ; that which is spoken of is called the subject ; 
that which is said of it the predicate ; and these are called the 
terms (or extremes), because logically the subject is placed 
first and the predicate last. In the middle is the copula, which 
indicates the act of judgment, as by it the predicate is affirmed 
or denied, of the subject." — Whately. — V. Proposition, 
Syllogism. 

Term (An Absolute or Non-Relative), one that is considered by 
itself, and conveys no idea of relation to anything of which it is 
a part, or to any other part distinguished from it. Absolute 
terms are also named non-connotative, as merely denoting an 
object without implying any attribute of that object ; as 
" Paris," "Romulus." 

Term (An Abstract) denotes the quality of a being, without regard 
to the subject in which it is ; as "justice," " wisdom." Abstract 
terms are nouns substantive. 

Term (A Common), such as stands for several individuals, which 
are called its sigmficates ; as " man," " city." Such terms, and 
such only can be affirmatively predicated of several others, 
and they are therefore called predicables. 

Terms (Compatible or Consistent) express two views which 
can be taken of the same object at the same time ; as " white 
and hard." 

Term (A Complex) is a proposition— q. v. 

Term (A Concrete) denotes the quality of a being, and either 
expresses, or must be referred to, some subject in which it is ; 
as "fool," "philosopher," "high," "wise." Concrete terms are 
usually, but not always, nouns adjective. 

Terms (The Contradictory Opposition of) is, when they differ 
only in respectively wanting and having the particle " not," or 
its equivalent. One or other of such term* is applicable to 
every object. 

— L 



514 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

TERM— 

Terms (Contrary) come both under some one class, but are the 
most different of all that belong to that class ; as " wise" and 
" foolish," both coming under the class of mental qualities. 
There are some objects to which neither of such terms is 
applicable ; a stone is neither wise nor foolish. 

Term (A Definite), one which marks out an object or class 
of beings ; as u Caasar," " corporeal." Positive terms are 
definite. 

Term (An Indefinite), one which does not mark out, but only 
exclude an object; as, " not-Caesar," " incorporeal." Privative 
and negative terms are called indefinite. 

Term (A Negative) denotes that the positive view could not be 
taken of the object ; it affirms the absence of a thing from 
some subject in which it could not be present ; as, " a dumb 
statue" (you would not say u a speaking statue"). u A life- 
less corpse" (you would not say u a living corpse"). The 
same term may be negative, positive, or privative, as it is 
viewed with relation to contrary ideas. Thus " immortal" is 
privative or negative viewed with relation to death, and posi- 
tive viewed with relation to life. 

Terms (Opposite) express two views which cannot be taken of 
one single object at the same time ; as u white and black." 

Term (A Positive) denotes a certain view of an object, as being 
actually taken of it ; as " speech," " a man speaking." 

Term (A Privative) denotes that the positive view might conceiv- 
ably be taken of the object, but is not; " dumbness," u a man 
silent" (you might say, " a man speaking"). u An unburied 
corpse" (you might say, u a buried corpse"). 

Term (A Relative), that which expresses an object viewed in rela- 
tion to the whole, or to another part of a more complex object 
of thought; as " half " and " whole," u master and servant." 
Such nouns are called correlative to each other ; nor can one 
of them be mentioned without a notion of the other being 
raised in the mind. 

Term (A Simple) expresses a completed act of apprehension, but 
no more ; and may be used alone either as the subject or pre- 
dicate of a proposition. u Virtue is its own reward." Virtue 
is a simple term, and its own reward is also a simple term. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 515 

TERM— 

Term (A Singular), such as stands for an individual; as " So- 
crates," " London," « this man," " that city." Such terms can- 
not be predicated affirmatively of anything but themselves. 
But general terms, as " fowl," "bird," may be truly affirmed 
of many. 
XERnirvisTS — V. Nominalism. 

TESTIMONY " is the declaration of one who professes to know 
the truth of that which he affirms." 

" The difficulty is, when testimonies contradict common 
experience, and the reports of history and witnesses clash with 
the ordinary course of nature, or with one another,"— Locke 
Essay on Hum. Understand., book iv., chap. 16. 

If testimony were not a source of evidence, we must lose all 
benefit of the experience and observation of others. Much of 
human knowledge rests on the authority of testimony. 

According to Dr. Reid, the validity of this authority is 
resolvable into the constitution of the human mind. He main- 
tains {Inquiry, ch. 6, sect. 24) that we have a natural principle 
of veracity, which has its counterpart in a natural principle 
of credulity— that is, while we are naturally disposed to speak 
the truth, we are naturally disposed to believe what is spoken 
by others. 

But, says Mr. Locke (Essay on Hum. Understand., book iv., 
ch. 15, 16), " Testimony may be fallacious. He who declares 
a thing, 1. May be mistaken, or imposed upon. 2. He may b 
an impostor and intend to deceive." 

The evidence of testimony is, therefore, only probable, and 
requires to be carefully examined. 

The nature of the thing testified to— whether it be a matter 
of science or of common life— the character of the person 
testifying— whether the testimony be that of one or of many— 
whether it be given voluntarily or compulsorily, hastily or de- 
liberately, are some of the circumstances to be attended to. 

Testimony may be oral or written. The coin, the monu- 
ment, and other material proofs have also been called testi- 
mony. So that testimony includes tradition and history. 

Mr. Hume maintained that no amount of testimony can be 
sufficient to establish the truth of a miracle. See reply to him 



•e 



516 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

TESTIMONY— 

by Dr. Adams,* in his Essay on Miracles, and Dr. Campbell 
on Miracles, and Dr. Douglas on Miracles. 

It was maintained by Craig, a celebrated English geo- 
metrician, and by Petersen, that the value of testimom 
decreases by the lapse of time. And Laplace, in some measure, 
favoured this view. But if the matter of fact be well authenti 
cated in the first instance, lapse of time and continued beliei 
in it may add to the validity of the evidence. — V. Evidence. 

THEISM (®2oV, God) is opposed to atheism. It is not abso- 
lutely opposed, by its derivation, to Pantheism, or the belief 
that the universe is God ; nor to Polytheism, or the belief that 
there are many Gods ; nor to Ditheism, or the belief that there 
are two divine principles, one of good and another of evil. 
But usage, penes quern est arbitrium et norma loquendi, has 
restricted this word to the belief in one intelligent and free 
spirit, separate from his works. " To believe that everything 
is governed, ordered, or regulated for the best, by a designing 
principle or mind, necessarily good and permanent, is to be a 
perfect Theist." — Shaftesbury, Inquiry, book i., pt. i., sect. 2. 

u These are they who are strictly and properly called Theists, 
who affirm that a perfectly conscious, understanding being, or 
mind, existing from eternity, was the cause of all other things ; 
and they, on the contrary, who derive all things from senseless 
matter, as the first original, and deny that there is any con- 
scious, understanding being, self-existent or unmade, are those 
that are properly called Atheists."' 1 — Cudworth, Intell. Syst., 
book i., ch. 4, sect. 4. 

u Though, in a strict and proper sense, they be only Theists 
who acknowledge one God perfectly omnipotent, the sole 
original of all things, and as well the cause of matter as of 
anything else ; yet it seems reasonable that such consideration 
should be had of the infirmity of human understandings, as to 
extend the word further, that it may comprehend within it 

* " Hume told Caddell the bookseller, that he had a great desire to be introduced to 
as many of the persons who had written against him as could be collected; and re- 
quested Caddell to bring him and them together. Accordingly, Dr. Douglas, Dr. 
Adams, <fec, were invited by Caddell to dine at his house in order to meet Hume. They 
came; and Dr. Price, who was of the party, assured me that they were all delighted 
with David."— Rogers's Table Talk. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 517 

THEISM— 

those also who assert one intellectual self-existent from eter- 
nity, the framer and governor of the whole world, though not 
the creator of the matter ; and that none should be condemned 
for absolute Atheists merely because they hold eternal uncre- 
ated matter, unless they also deny an eternal unmade mind, 
ruling over the matter, and so make senseless matter the 
sole original of all things." — Ibid, sect. 7. 

Theist and Deist both signify simply one who believes in 
God ; and about the beginning of last century both were 
employed to denote one who believes in God independently of 
revelation. " Averse as I am to the cause of Theism or name 
of Deist, when taken in a sense exclusive of revelation, I con- 
sider still that, in strictness, the root of all is Theism ; and 
that to be a settled Christian, it is necessary to be first of all 
a good Theist." — Shaftesbury, The Moralists, part i., sect. 2. 
But from about the time of Shaftesbury, the term Deist has . 
generally been applied to such as are indifferent or hostile to 
the claims of revelation. Balguy's First Letter to a Deist was 
against Lord Shaftesbury. His Second Letter to a Deist was 
against Tindal. All the Deistical writers noticed by Leland 
were unfriendly to revelation. 

41 The words Deist and Theist are, strictly speaking, perhaps 
synonymous ; but yet it is generally to be observed that the 
former is used in a bad, and the latter in a good sense. Custom 
has appropriated the term Deist to the enemies of revelation 
and of Christianity in particular ; while the word Theist is con- 
sidered applicable to all who believe in one God." — Irons, On 
Final Caiises, App., p. 207. 

" Theistae generatim vocantur, qui Deum esse tenent, sive recte 
sive prave cozteroquin de Deo sentiant. Deista3 vocabantur prce- 
sertim sozculo proxime elapso philosophi, qui Deum quidem esse 
affirmabanl, providentiam vero, revelationem, miracula, una 
verba, quidquid supernaturale audit, tollebant" — Ubaghs, Theo- 
dicece Elementa, p. 11. 
THEOCRACY (@goV, God; K^ocrog, rule). — Government under the 
Mosaic dispensation is called theocracy. 

" It will easily appear," says Lowman {On Civil Government 
of the Hebrews, chap. 7), " that the general union of the tribes 



518 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

THEOCRACY— 

as one body may be conceived after this manner — that the 
congregation of Israel, or the whole people enacted by them- 
selves or their representatives ; that the great council advised, 
consulted, proposed ; that the judge presided in their councils, 
and had the chief hand in executing what was resolved in 
them ; and that Jehovah, by the oracle, was to assent to and 
approve what was resolved, and authorize the execution of it 
in matters of the greatest importance to the whole state, so 
that the general union of the whole nation may not improperly 
be thus expressed. It was by the command of the people and 
advice of the senate, the judge presiding and the oracle 
approving." 

Egypt, down to a certain period, was governed by priests 
in the name of their gods, and Peru by Incas, who were 
regarded as the children of the sun. Mahomet, speaking in 
the name of God, exercised a theocratic sway, and that of the 
Grand Lama in Thibet is similar. 

" In the Contrat Social of Rousseau, the sovereignty of num- 
ber, of the numerical majority, is the fundamental principle of 
the work. For a long time he follows out the consequences 
of it with inflexible rigour ; a time arrives, however, when he 
abandons them, and abandons them with great effect ; he 
wishes to give his fundamental laws, his constitution, to the 
rising society ; his high intellect warned him that such a work 
could not proceed from universal suffrage, from the numerical 
majority, from the multitude : 6 A God,' said he, fc must give 
laws to men.' It is not magistracy, it is not sovereignty. . . 
. . . It is a particular and superior function, which has 
nothing in common with human empire." — Guizot, Hist, of 
Civilization, vol. i., p. 387. Contrat Social, b. ii., ch. 8. 

The term theocracy has been applied to the power wielded 
hy the Pope during the Middle Ages ; and Count de Maistre, 
in his work Du Pape, has argued strenuously in support of 
the supreme power, temporal and spiritual, of the sovereign 
pontiff. But the celibacy of the Homish priests is an obstacle 
to their theocratical organization. u Look at Asia, Egypt ; all 
the great theocracies are the work of a clergy, which is a com- 
plete society within itself, which suffices for its own wants, 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 519 

THEOCRACY— 

and borrows nothing from without." — Guizot, Hist, of Civi- 
lization, vol. i., p. 182. 
THEODICY (®z6s, God ; IUyi, a pleading or justification), a 
vindication of the ways of God. — This word was employed by 
Leibnitz, who in his Essais de Theodicee, sur la bonte de Dieu, 
la liberie de Vliomme et Vorigine du mal, published in 1710, 
maintained that the existence of moral evil has its origin in 
the free will of the creature, while metaphysical evil is nothing 
but the limitation which is involved in the essence of finite 
beings, and that out of this both physical and moral evil natu- 
rally flow. But these finite beings are designed to attain the 
utmost felicity they are capable of enjoying, while each, as a 
part, contributes to the perfection of the whole, which, of the 
many worlds that were possible, is the very best. On this 
account it has been called the theory of optimism — q. v. 

In Manuals of Philosophy the term tlieodicy is applied to 
that part which treats of the being, perfections, and government 
of God, and the immortality of the soul. 

In the Manuel de Philosophic, a Vusage des Colleges, 8vo, 
Paris, 184.6, Tlieodicee, which is written by Emille Saisset, 
is called rational theology, or the theology of reason, inde- 
pendent of revelation. " It proposes to establish the existence 
of a being infinitely perfect, and to determine his attributes 
and essential relations to the world." It treats of the exis- 
tence, attributes, and providence of God, and the immortality 
of the soul — which were formerly included under metaphysics. 

According to Kant, the objections which a tlieodicy should 
meet are : 1. The existence of moral evil, as contrary to the 
holiness of God. 2. Of physical evil, as contrary to his good- 
ness. 3. The disproportion between the crimes and the punish- 
ments of this life as repugnant to his justice. He approves 
of the vindication adopted by Job against his friends, founded 
on our imperfect knowledge of God's ways. 

" When the Jewish mind began to philosophize, and en- 
deavoured to produce dialectic proofs, its tlieodiccan philosophy, 
or justification of God, stopped, in the book of Job, at the 
avowal of the incomprehensibility of the destinies of mankind.'* 
— Bunsen, Hippolytus, vol. ii., p. 7. 



520 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

THEomcir— 

Butler, Analogy, part i., ch. 7, treats of the government of 
God; considered as a scheme or constitution imperfectly com- 
prehended, part ii., ch. 4. 

TIIEOGONY (0soV, God ; yovvj, generation) is that part of 
Pagan theology which treats of the genealogy and filiation 
of their deities. It is the title of a celebrated Greek poem by 
Hesiod, which has been commented on by M. J. D. Guigniaut 
{De la Theogonie d'Hesiode, Paris, 1835). The Works and 
Days, and Theogony of Hesiod were translated from the Greek, 
with remarks by Thomas Cooke, 2 vols., 4to, Lond., 1728. 

THEOLOGY (0so?, God ; Xoyog, discourse). — " Theology, what 
is it but the science of things divine ? What science can be 
attained unto without the help of natural discourse and rea- 
son?" — Hooker, Eccles. Pol., b. iii., sect. 8. 

" I mean theology, which, containing the knowledge of God 
and his creatures, our duty to Him and to our fellow- creatures, 
and a view of our present and future state, is the compre- 
hension of all other knowledge directed to its true end, i. e., 
the honour and veneration of the Creator, and the happiness 
of mankind. This is that noble study which is every man's 
duty, and every one that is a rational creature is capable of." 
— Locke, On the Cond. of the Understand., sect. 22. 

The word theology as now used, without any qualifying 
epithet, denotes that knowledge of God and of our duty to 
him which we derive from express revelation. In this re- 
stricted sense it is opposed to philosophy, and is divided into 
speculative or dogmatic — and moral or practical, according as 
it is occupied with the doctrines or the precepts which have 
been revealed for our belief and guidance. But the Greeks gave 
the name of (Qeokoyoi) to those who, like Hesiod and Orpheus, 
with no higher inspiration than that of the poet, sang of the 
nature of the gods and the origin of all things. Aristotle 
(Metaphys., lib. xi., ch. 6) said that of the three speculative 
sciences, physics, mathematics, and theology — the last was the 
highest, as treating of the most elevated of beings. Among 
the Romans, from the time of Numa Pompilius to that of the 
emperors, the knowledge and worship of the gods was made 
subservient to the interests of the state. So that, according 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 521 

THEOLOGY- 

to Augustin {Be Ciuitate, lib. vi., c. 1), there were three kinds 
of theology — the poetical, or that of the poets — the physical, or 
that of the philosophers — and the political, or that of the 
legislator. 

Among the Greeks and Romans, there being no divine 
revelation, the distinction between faith and reason was not 
taken. Christians were long unwilling to admit that any satis- 
factory knowledge of God and his attributes, and of the 
relations between Him and his creatures could be had inde- 
pendently of revelation. And it was not till after Descartes 
that the distinction of theology, as natural, and positive or 
revealed, was commonly taken. The distinction is rather 
obscured in the Essais de Theodicee of Leibnitz, but clearly 
expressed by Wolf in the title of his work, Theologia Naturalis 
Methodo Scientifica Pertr aetata, 2 vols.,. 4to, Frankfort and 
Leipzig, 1736-37. He thinks it is demonstrative, and calls it 
(Prolegom., sect. 4) " The science which has for its object the 
existence of God and his attributes, and the consequences of 
these attributes in relation to other beings, with the refutation 
of all errors contrary to the true idea of God ; in short, all 
that is now commonly included under natural theology or 
theodicy, or both. 
Natural Theology. — This phrase has been very commonly em- 
ployed, but it has been challenged. 

" The name natural theology, which ever and anon we still 
hear applied to the philosophical cognition of the Divine 
Being and his existence, ought carefully to be avoided. Such 
a designation is based on a thorough misconception and total 
inversion of ideas. Every system of theology that is not super- 
natural, or at least that does not profess to be so, but pre- 
tends to understand naturally the idea of God, and regards the 
knowledge of the divine essence as a branch of natural science, 
or derives the idea simply from nature, is even on that account 
false. Missing and entirely mistaking its proper object, it 
must, in short, prove absolutely null and void. Properly, 
indeed, this inquiry needs no peculiar word, nor special divi- 
sion, and scientific designation. . The name generally of philo- 
sophy, or specially of a philosophy of God, is perfectly 



522 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 



THEOLOG¥~ 

sufficient to designate the investigation into science and faith, 
and their reciprocal relation — their abiding discord, or its 
harmonious reconciliation and intrinsic concord." — Schlegel, 
Philosoph. of Life, &c., Bonn's edit., p. 194. 

In Coleridge's Aids to Reflection, natural is opposed to 
spiritual, as sensuous to super -sensuous or super -natural. 

This objection might be obviated by calling that knowledge 
of God and of his attributes and administration which the light 
of reason furnishes, rational theology. But this phrase has 
been of late years employed in a different sense, especially in 
Germany. Natural theology confines itself exclusively to that 
knowledge of God which the light of nature furnishes, and 
does not intermeddle with the discoveries or the doctrines of 
positive or revealed theology. It prosecutes its inquiries by the 
unassisted strength of reason within its own sphere. But 
rational theology carries the torch or light of reason into the 
domain of revelation. It criticises and compares texts — ana- 
lyzes doctrines — examines traditions — and brings all the instru- 
ments of philosophy to bear upon things divine and spiritual, 
in order to reduce them to harmony with things human and 
rational. — V. Rationalism. 

THEOPATHY (®so$, Deity; iroc&og, suffering or feeling). — A word 
used by Dr. Hartley as synonymous with piety, or a sense of 
Deity. 

THEORY (dsaQicc, contemplation, speculation). — Theory and 
theoretical are properly opposed to practice and practical. 
Theory is mere knowledge ; practice is the application of it. 
Though distinct they are dependent, and there is no opposi- 
tion between them. Theory is the knowledge of the principles 
by which practice accomplishes its end. Hypothetical and 
theoretical are sometimes used as synonymous with conjectural. 
But this is unphilosophical in so far as theoretical is concerned. 
Theory always implies knowledge— knowledge of a thing in its 
principles or causes. 

" Theory is a general collection of the inferences drawn from 
facts and compressed into principles." — Parr, Sequel to a 
Printed Paper. 

u With Plato, Oeapth is applied to a deep contemplation of 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 523 

THEORY— 

the truth. By Aristotle it is always opposed to tt^mtth!/, 
and to icoiiiv, so that he makes philosophy theoretical, practical, 
and artistical. The Latins and Boethius rendered feagetv by spec- 
ulari. With us it means a learned discourse of philosophers of 
speculative use." — Trendelenburg, Elementa Log. Arist., p. 76. 

u Theory denotes the most general laws to which certain facts 
can be reduced." — Mackintosh, Prel. Diss., p. 61, WhewelTs 
edit. ; and at p. 367, the distinctions between hypothesis and 
theory are thus stated : — 

1. The principles employed in the explanation (of the phe- 
nomena) should be known really to exist ; in which consists 
the main distinction between hypothesis and theory. Gravity is 
a principle universally known to exist ; ether and a nervous 
flmd are mere suppositions. 2. These principles should be 
known to produce effects like those which are ascribed to them 
in the theory. This is a further distinction between hypothesis 
and theory; for there are an infinite number of degrees of like- 
ness, from the faint resemblances which have led some to fancy 
that the functions of the nerves depend on electricity, to the 
remarkable coincidences between the appearances of projectiles 
on earth, and the movements of the heavenly bodies, which 
constitute the Newtonian system ; a theory now perfect, though 
exclusively founded on analogy, and in which one of the classes 
of phenomena brought together by it is not the subject of direct 
experience. 3. It should correspond, if not with all the facts 
to be explained, at least with so great a majority of them as to 
render it highly probable that means will in time be found of 
reconciling it to all. It is only on this ground that the New- 
tonian system justly claimed the title of a legitimate theory 
during that long period when it was unable to explain many 
celestial appearances, before the labours of a century and the 
genius of Laplace at length completed the theory, by adapting 
it to all the phenomena. A theory may be just before it is 
complete. 

" Theory and hypothesis may be distinguished thus : a 
hypothesis is a guess or supposition, made concerning the cause 
of some particular fact, with the view of trying experiments or 
making observations to discover the truth. A theory is a com- 



524 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

THEORY- 

plete system of suppositions put together for the purpose of 
explaining all the facts that belong to some one science. For 
example — astronomers have suggested many hypotheses, in 
order to account for the luminous stream which follows comets. 
They have also formed many theories of the heavens ; or in 
other words, complete explanations of all the appearances of 
the heavenly bodies and their movements. When a theory has 
been generally received by men of science, it is called a system ; 
as the Ptolemaic system; the Copernican system; the Newtonian 
system." — Taylor, Elements of Thought. 

See a paper on Theory in Blackwood" 1 s Mag. for August, 1830. 
— V. Hypothesis. 
THEOSOPHISM or THEOSOPHY (®so s , God ; aoQiu, know- 
ledge). 

u The Theosophists, neither contented with the natural light 
of human reason, nor with the simple doctrines of Scripture 
understood in their literal sense, have recourse to an internal 
supernatural light superior to all other illuminations, from 
which they profess to derive a mysterious and divine philosophy 
manifested only to the chosen favourites of heaven." — Enfield, 
Hist, of Phil., vol. ii. 

See Tholuck (F. A. D.), Theosophia Persarum Pantheistica, 
8vo, Berlin, 1821. App., 1838. 

Theosophia seems at one time to have been used as synony- 
mous with theologia. Thus in John Major's Commentary on 
the First Book of the Sentences, published in 1510, Mr. David 
Cranston is styled In Sacra Theosophia Baccalaureus. 

The theosophists are a school of philosophers who would 
mix enthusiasm with observation, alchemy with theology, meta- 
physics with medicine, and clothe the whole with a form of 
mystery and inspiration. It began with Paracelsus at the 
opening of the sixteenth century, and has survived in Saint 
Martin to the end of the eighteenth. Paracelsus, Jacob Boehm, 
and Saint Martin, may be called popular, while Cornelius 
Agrippa, Valentine Weigelius, Robert Fludd, and Yan Hel- 
mont, are more philosophical in their doctrines. The Rev. 
Will. Law was also a theosophist. But they all hold different 
doctrines ; so that they cannot be reduced to a system. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 525 

THEOSOPHISM- 

" Tbe theosophist is one who gives you a theory of God, or 
of the works of God, which has not reason, but an inspiration 
of his own for its basis." — Yaughan, Hours with Mystics, vol. 
i., p. 45. 

"Both the politics and the theosophy of Coleridge were at the 
mercy of a discursive genius, intellectually bold, educationally 
timid, which, anxious, or rather willing, to bring conviction 
and speculation together, mooting all points as it went, and 
throwing the subtlest glancing lights on many, ended in satis- 
fying nobody, and concluding nothing." — Hunt, Imagination 
and Fancy, 12mo, 1844, p. 276. 
THESIS (fiats, from Ti^/jui, to lay down) is a position or propo- 
sition, the truth of which is not plain from the terms, but 
requires evidence, or explanation, or proof. In the schools it 
was especially applied to those propositions in theology, philo- 
sophy, law, and medicine, which the candidates for degrees 
were required to deiend. 
THOUGHT AND THINKING " are used in a more, and in a 
less restricted signification. In the former meaning they are 
limited to the discursive energies alone ; in the latter, they are 
co-extensive with consciousness." — Sir Will. Hamilton, Reid's 
Works, p. 222. note. 

Thinking is employed by Sir Will. Hamilton (Discussion;:, 
&c, Append, i., p. 578) as comprehending all our cognitive 
energies. 

By Descartes, cogiiatio, pensee, is used to denote or compre- 
hend " all that in us of which we are immediately conscious. 
Thus all the operations of the will, of the imagination and 
senses, are thoughts.'' — Resp. ad Sec. Obj., p. 85, Ed., 166§. 
Again, in reply to the question. What is a thing which thinks? 
he says, "It is a thing which doubts, understands, conceives, 
affirms, desires, wills, and does not will, which imagines, also, 
and feels." — Medit. ii., p. 11. 

"Though thinking be supposed ever so much the proper 
action of the soul, yet it is not necessary to suppose that it 
should be always tliinking, always in action." — Locke, Essay on 
Hum. Understand., book ii., ch. 1. 

" Thought proper, as distinguished from other facts of con- 



526 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

THOUGHT- 

sciousness, may be adequately described as the act of knowing 
or judging of tilings by means of concepts." — Mansel, Prolegom. 
Log., p. 22.— V. Train of Thought. 
TIME (tempus). — Continuation of existence is duration ; duration 
unlimited is eternity ; duration limited is time. 

By Aristotle, time was denned to be u the measure of mo- 
tion, secundum prius et posterius. We get the idea of time 
on the occasion when we observe first and last, that is succes- 
sion. Duration without succession would be timeless, immea- 
surable. But how are we to fix what is first and last in the 
motion of any body ? By men in all ages the motions of the 
heavenly bodies have been made the measure of duration. So 
that the full definition of time is — c It is the measure of the 
duration of things that exist in succession, by the motion of 
the heavenly bodies. '" — Monboddo, Ancient Metaphys., book 
iv., ch. 1. 

" As our conception of space originates in that of body, and 
our conception of motion in that of space, so our conception 
of time originates in that of motion ; and particularly in those 
regular and equable motions carried on in the heavens, the 
parts of which, from their perfect similarity to each other, 
are correct measures of the continuous and successive quantity 
called time, with which they are conceived to co- exist. Time, 
therefore, may be defined the perceived number of successive 
movements ; for as number ascertains the greater or lesser quan- 
tity of things numbered, so time ascertains the greater or lesser 
quantity of motion performed." — Gillies, Analysis of Aristotle, 
chap. 2. 

According to Mr. Locke (Essay on Hum. Understand., book 
ii., chap. 14), " Reflection upon the train of ideas, which appear 
one after another in our minds, is that which furnishes us with 
the idea of succession ; and the distance between any two parts 
of that succession, is that we call duration." Now by attending 
to the train of ideas in our minds we may have the idea of 
succession — but this presupposes the idea of duration in which 
the succession takes place. "We may measure duration by 
the succession of thoughts in the mind, as we measure length 
by inches or feet, but the notion or idea of duration must be 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 527 

TIME— 

antecedent to the mensuration of it, as the notion of length 
is antecedent to its being measured." — Reid, Intell. Pow., 
essay iii., chap. 5. 

See also Cousin (on Locke) Cours de Philosophy lecons 17, 
18 ; Stewart, Phil. Essays, essay ii., ch. 2 ; see also the Frag- 
ments of Royer Collard, at the end of torn. iv. of (Euvres de 
Reid. 

Dr. Reid (ut supra) says, "I know of no ideas or notions 
that have a better claim to be accounted simple and original 

than those of space and time The sense of seeing, 

by itself, gives us the conception and belief of only two dimen- 
sions of extension, but the sense of touch discovers three ; and 
reason, from the contemplation of finite extended things, leads 
us necessarily to the belief of an immensity that contains them. 

4 ' In like manner, memory gives us the conception and belief 
of finite intervals of duration. From the contemplation of these, 
reason leads us necessarily to the belief of an eternity which com- 
prehends all things that have a beginning and an end." In 
another passage of the same essay, chap. 3, he says, " We are 
at a loss to what category or class of things we ought to 
refer them. They are not beings, but rather the receptacles 
of every created being, without which it could not have had 
the possibility of existence. Philosophers have endeavoured 
to reduce all the objects of human thought to these three 
classes, of substances, modes, and relations. To which of them 
shall we refer time, space, and number, the most common objects 
of thought?" 

In the philosophy of Kant, " Time is a necessary repre- 
sentation which lies at the foundation of all intuition. Time 
is given, a priori — it is the form of the internal sense, and the 
formal condition, a priori, of phenomena in general. Hence 
it will be seen that all intuition is nothing but the repre- 
sentation of phenomena; that the things we see or envisage 
are not in themselves what they are taken for ; that if we did 
away with ourselves, that is to say, the subject or subjective 
quality of our senses in general, every quality that we discover 
in time and space, and even time and space themselves, would 
disappear. What objects maybe in themselves, separated from 



528 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

TIME- 

the receptivity of our sensibility, is quite unknown to us." — 
Analysis of Kant's Criticism of Pure Reason. By the Trans- 
lator, 8vo, Lond., 1844, p, 10. 

" One of the commonest errors is to regard time as an agent. 
But in reality, time does nothing, and is nothing. We use it 
as a compendious expression for all those causes which operate 
slowly and imperceptibly ; but unless some positive cause is in 
action, no change takes place in the lapse of 1,000 years : e. g., 
a drop of water encased in a cavity of silex." — Coplestone, 
Remains, p. 123. — V. Space. 

TOPOLOGV. — V. MEMORIA TeCHNICA. 

TISAJMTffON (trado, to hand down) " is any way of delivering 
a thing or word to another." — Bp. Taylor, Dissuasive from 
Popery. u Tradition is the Mercury (messenger) of the human 
race." — Tiberghien, Essai des Connaiss. Humaines, p. 50. 

"Tradition! oh tradition! thou of the seraph tongue, 
The ark that links two ages, the ancient and the young." 

Adam Mickiewitz. 

Nescire quid aniea quam natus sis accident, id est semper esse 
puerum. — Cicero, Orator., cap. 14. 

When we believe the testimony of others not given by them- 
selves directly but by others, this is tradition. It is testimony 
not written by the witness, nor dictated by him to be written, 
but handed down memoriter, from generation to generation. 

" According to the principle of tradition (as the ground of 
certainty), it is supposed that God himself first imparted truth 
to the world, pure and unmixed from heaven. In the para- 
disiacal state, and during the whole period from the first man 
down to the Christian era, it is said by these philosophers 
there was a channel of divine communication almost perpe- 
tually open between the mind of man and God. Here accord- 
ingly, it is thought we lay hold upon a kind of truth which 
is not subject to the infirmity of human reason, and which 
coming down to us by verbal or documental tradition from 
the mind of Deity itself, affords us at once a solid basis for all 
truth, and a final appeal against all error."- — Morell, Philosoph. 
Tenden., p. 17. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 529 

TRADITION— 

See Molitor (J. F.), Philosophic de la tradition, 8vo, Paris, 
1837. 

On the necessity of Tradition, see Irenceus, i., 10. 
TRAIN OF THOUGHT. — u The subject of the association of 
ideas," says Mr. Stewart {Elements, vol. L, chap. 5), u naturally 
divides itself into two parts. The first relates to the influence 
of association in regulating the succession of our thoughts ; the 
second, to its influence on the intellectual powers, and on the 
moral character, by the more indissoluble combinations which it 
leads us to form in infancy and early youth." — V. Combination 
of Ideas. 

While we are awake a constant succession of thoughts is 
passing through the mind. Hobbes calls it the con-sequence 
or train of imaginations, the train of thoughts and mental dis- 
course. He says it is of two sorts. The first is unguided, 
without design, and inconstant. The second is moi e constant, 
as being regulated by some desire and design. That is, it is 
spontaneous or intentional. 

In the Train of Thought, or the succession of the various 
modes of consciousness, it has been observed that they succeed 
in some kind of order. " Not every thought to every thought 
succeeds indifferently," says Hobbes. And it has long been 
matter of inquiry among philosophers to detect the law or laws 
according to which the train or succession of thought is deter- 
mined. 

According to Aristotle, the consecution of thoughts is either 
necessary or habitual. By the necessary consecution of thoughts, 
it is probable that he meant that connection or dependence 
subsisting between notions, one of which cannot be thought 
without our thinking the other; as cause and effect, means 
and end, quality and substance, body and space. This conse- 
cution or connection of thoughts admits of no further expla- 
nation than to say, that such is the constitution of the human 
mind. 

The habitual consecution of thoughts differs in different indi- 
viduals : but the general laws, according to which it is regulated, 
are chiefly three, viz.: — The law of similars, the law of con- 
traries, and the law of co-adjacents. From the time of Axis- 
2 M 



530 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

TRAIN OF THOIOHT- 

totle, these laws have been noticed and illustrated by all 
writers on the subject. But it has been thought that these 
may be reduced to one supreme and universal law ; and Sir 
James Mackintosh expresses his surprise (Dissert., p. 348, 
Edit. Whewell) that Dr. Brown should have spoken of this as 
a discovery of his own, when the same thing had been hinted 
by Aristotle, distinctly laid down by Hobbes, and fully unfolded 
both by Hartley and Condillac. 

The brief and obscure text of Aristotle, in his Treatise on 
Memory and Reminiscence, has been explained as containing 
the universal law as to the consecution of thoughts. (Sir W. 
Hamilton, Eeicfs Works, p. 897.) It is proposed to call this 
the law of Redintegration. ' ; Thoughts which have, at any time, 
recent or remote, stood to each other in the relation of co- 
existence, or immediate consecution, do, when severally repro- 
duced, tend to reproduce each other." In other words, u The 
parts of any total thought, when subsequently called into con- 
sciousness, are apt to suggest, immediately, the parts to which 
they were proximately related, and mediately, the whole of 
which they were constituent." 

Hobbes, Leviathan, part i., chap. 3 ; Human Nat., p. 17 ; 
Beid, Intell. Pow., essay iv. 
TRANSCENDENT, TEANSCENUENTAL (transcendo, to go 
beyond, to surpass, to be supreme). 

a To be impenetrable, discerptible, and unactive, is the 
nature of all body and matter, as such ; and the properties 
of a spirit are the direct contrary, to be penetrable, indis- 
cerptible, and self- motive ; yea, so different they are in 
all things, that they seem to have nothing but being and 
the transcendental attributes of that in common." — Glanvill, 
Essay i. 

Transcendental is that which is above the praedicamental. 
Being is transcendental. The prcedicamental is what belongs 
to a certain category of being; as the ten summa genera. As 
being cannot be included under any genus, but transcends them 
all, so the properties or affections of being have also been 
called transcendental. The three properties of being commonly 
enumerated are unum, verum, and bonum. To these some add 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 531 

TRANSCENDENT— 

aliqnid and res: and these, with ens, make the six transcen- 
dentals. But res and aliquid mean only the same as ens. The 
first three are properly called transcendentals, as these only are 
passions or affections of being, as being. — V. Unity, Truth, 
Good. 

a In the schools, transcendentalis and transcendens were 
convertible expressions employed to mark a term or notion 
which transcended, that is, which rose above, and thus con- 
tained under it, the categories or summa genera of Aristotle. 
Such, for example, is being, of which the ten categories are 
only subdivisions. Kant, according to his wont, twisted these 
old terms into a new signification. First of all, he distinguished 
them from each other. Transcendent (transcendens) he em- 
ployed to denote what is wholly beyond experience, being 
neither given as an a posteriori nor a priori element of cog- 
nition — what therefore transcends every category of thought. 
Transcendental {transcendentalis) he applied to signify the a 
priori or necessary cognitions which, though manifested in, as 
affording the conditions of, experience, transcend the sphere of 
that contingent or adventitious knowledge which we acquire 
by experience. Transcendental is not therefore what tran- 
scends, but what in fact constitutes a category of thought. 
This term, though probably from another quarter, has found 
favour with Mr. Stewart, who proposes to exchange the 
expression principles of common sense, for, among other names, 
that of transcendental truths." — Sir Will. Hamilton, Reid's 
Works, note A, sect. 5. 

In the philosophy of Kant all those principles of knowledge 
which are original and primary, and which are determined a 
priori are called transcendental. They involve necessary and 
universal truths, and thus transcend all truth derived from 
experience which must always be contingent and particular. 
The principles of knowledge, which are pure and transcen- 
dental, form the ground of all knowledge that is empirical or 
determined a posteriori. In this sense transcendental is opposed 
to empirical. 

u There is a philosophic (and inasmuch as it is actualized by 
an effort of freedom, an artificial) consciousness which lies 



532 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

TRANSCENDENT— 

beneath, or (as it were) behind the spontaneous consciousness 
natural to all reflecting beings. As the elder Romans dis- 
tinguished their northern provinces into Cis- Alpine and Trans - 
Alpine, so may we divide all the objects of human knowledge 
into those on this side, and those on the other side of the 
spontaneous consciousness ; citra et trans conscientiam cummu- 
nem. The latter is exclusively the domain of pure philosophy, 
which is, therefore, properly entitled transcendental in order 
to discriminate it at once, both from mere reflection and 
representation on the one hand, and on the other from those 
flights of lawless speculation, which, abandoned by all distinct 
consciousness, because transgressing the bounds and purposes 
of our intellectual faculties, are justly condemned as transcen- 
dent" — Coleridge, Biograph. Liter., p. 143. 
Transcendent is opposed to immanent — q. i\ 
Transcendental is opposed to empirical — q. v. 

TRANSFERENCE and TEAN§LAT10N are terms employed 
by the author of the Light of Nature Pursued, to denote the 
fact that our desires are often transferred from primary objects 
to those which are secondary or subservient ; as from the 
desire of greatness or honour may arise, in a secondary way, 
the desire of wealth as a means of greatness or power. — Tucker, 
Light of Nature; chapter on Transference or Translation.— V. 
Desire. 

TRANSMIGRATION.— V. METEMPSYCHOSIS. 
TRANSPOSITION. — V. CONVERSION. 

TBIVIUM. — The seven Liberal Arts were Grammar, Rhetoric, 
Logic, Arithmetic, Geometry, Astronomy, and Music. 

Lingua, Tropus, Ratio, humerus, Tonus, Angulus, Astra. 
Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric, constituted the Trivium—tres 
vice in unum, because they all refer to words or language. 
Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, and Astronomy, constituted the 
Quadrivium — quatuor vice in unum, because they all refer to 
quantity. 

" Gramm. loquitur, Dia. rerba docet r Khet. verba colorat - r 
Mus. canit, Ar. numerat, Geo. ponderat, Ast. colit astra." 

The Mechanical Arts were Rus, JSTemus, Arma, Faber, Vul- 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 533 

TBIVIUM- 

nera, Lana, Kates ; or, Agriculture, Propagation of Trees, 
Manufacture of Arms, Carpenters' work, Medicine, Weaving, 
and Ship -building. 
TRUTH has been distinguished by most metaphysical writers, 
according as it respects being, knowledge, and speech, into 
Veritas ends, cognitionis, et signi. By others, truth has been 
distinguished as entitative, objective, and formal, the truth of 
signs being included under the last. 

Veritas entis — Transcendental or Metaphysical Truth. 

The pillar and ground of all truth is in truth of being — that 
truth by which a thing is what it is, by which it has its own 
nature and properties, and has not merely the appearance but 
reality of being. Thus gold has truth of being, i. e., is real 
gold, when it has not only the appearance, but all the pro- 
perties belonging to that metal. Philosophy is the knowledge 
of being, and if there were no real being, that is, if truth 
could not be predicated of things, there could be no know- 
ledge. But things exist independently of being known. 
They do not exist because they are known, nor as they are 
known. But they are known because they are, and as they 
are, when known fully. 

Teritas Cognitionis. 

Truth, as predicated of knowledge, is the conformity of our 
knowledge with the reality of the object known — for, as know- 
ledge is the knowledge of something, when a thing is known 
as it is, that knowledge is formally true. To know that fire is 
hot, is true knowledge. Objective truth is the conformity of 
the thing or object known with true knowledge. But there 
seems to be little difference whether we say that truth consists 
in the conformity of the formal conception to the thing known 
or conceived of, or in the conformity of the thing as it is to 
true knowledge. 

Veritas Signi. 

The truth of the sign consists in its adequateness or con- 
formity to the thing signified. If falsity in those things which 
imitate another consists not in so far as they imitate, but in so 
far as they cannot imitate it or represent it adequately or fully, 
so the truth of a representation or sign consists in its being 



534 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY, 

TRUTH— 

adequate to the thing signified. The truth and adequacy of 
signs belongs to enunciation in logic. 

" Independent of the truth which consists in the conformity 
of thoughts to things, called scientific — and of that which lies 
in the correspondence of words with thoughts, called moral 
truth — there is a truth called logical, depending on the self- 
consistency of thoughts themselves. .... Thought is 
valueless except in so far as it leads to correct knowledge of 
things ; a higher truth than the merely logical, in subservience 
to which alone the logical is desirable. The reason that we 
sedulously avoid the purely logical error of holding two con- 
tradictory propositions is, that we believe one of them to be a 
fair representation of facts, so that in adopting the other we 
should admit a falsehood, which is always abhorrent to the 
mind. If we call the logical trutli, subjective, as consisting in 
the due direction of the thinking subject, we may call this 
higher metaphysical truth, objective, because it depends on our 
thoughts fairly representing the objects that give rise to them." 
■ — Thomson, Outline of Laws of Thought, sect. 81, 82. 

Veritas est adcequatio intellectus et rei, secundum quod intel- 
lectus dicit esse quod est, vel non esse quod non est. 11 — Aquinas* 
Contra. Gent., i., 49. 

Truth, in the strict logical sense, applies to propositions and 
to nothing else ; and consists in the conformity of the declara- 
tion made to the actual state of the case ; agreeably to Aldrich's 
definition of u a true" proposition — vera est quae quod res est 
dicit. 

In its etymological sense, truth signifies that which the 
speaker <c trows," or believes to be the fact. The etymology 
of the word &hyUg, to f&<% 'hv}$ov, seems to.be similar; denoting 
non - concealment. In this sense it is opposed to a lie ; 
and may be called moral, as the other may be called logical 
truth. 

u Truth is not unfrequently applied, in loose and inaccurate 
; language, to arguments ; when the proper expression would be 
* correctness,' 'conclusiveness,' or 'validity.' 

u Truth again, is often used in the sense of reality, to ov. 
People speak of the truth ox falsity of facts; properly speaking, 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 535 

TRUTH— 

they are either real or fictitious : it is the statement that is ' true ' 
or 'false.' The ■ true' cause of anything, is a common ex- 
pression ; * meaning that which may with truth be assigned as 
the cause.' The senses of falsehood correspond." — YYhately, 
Log., Appendix i. 

"Necessary truths are such as are known independently of 
inductive proof. They are, therefore, either self-evident pro- 
positions, or deduced from self-evident propositions.'" — Kidd, 
Principles of Reasoning, chap. 7. 

Necessary truths are those in which we not only learn that 
the proposition is true, but see that it must be true : in which 
the negation is not only false, but impossible ; in which we 
cannot, even by an effort of the imagination, or in a supposi- 
tion, conceive the reverse of what is asserted. The relations 
of numbers are the examples of such truths. Two and three 
make five. We cannot conceive it to be otherwise. 

•• A necessary truth or law of reason, is a truth or law the 
opposite of which is inconceivable, contradictory, nonsensical, 
impossible ; more shortly, it is a truth, in the fixing of which 
nature had only one alternative, be it positive or negative. 
Nature might have fixed that the sun should go round the 
earth, instead of the earth round the sun ; at least we see 
nothing in that supposition which is contradictory and absurd. 
Either alternative was equally possible. But nature could not 
have fixed that two straight lines should, in any circumstances, 
enclose a space ; for this involves a contradiction." — Ferrier. 
Inst of Metaphys., p. 19. 

Contingent truths are those which, without doing violence to 
reason, we may conceive to be otherwise. If I say u Grass is 
green,"' u Socrates was a philosopher," I assert propositions 
which are true, but need not have been so. It might have 
pleased the Creator to make grass blue — and Socrates might 
never have lived. 

"There are truths of reasoning (reason) and truths of/act 
Truths of reason are necessary, and their contradictory is im- 
possible — those of fact are contingent, and their opposite is 
possible. When a truth is necessary you can find the reason 
by analysis, resolving it into ideas and truths more simple, till 



536 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

TRUTH— 

you come to what is primitive." — Leibnitz, Nouveaux Essais, 
iv., 2 ; Monadologie, sect. 33. 

"Though the primary truths of fact and the primary truths of 
intelligence (the contingent and necessary truths of Eeid) form 
two very distinct classes of the original beliefs or intuitions of 
our consciousness, there appears no sufficient ground to regard 
their sources as different, and therefore to be distinguished by 
different names. In this I regret that I am unable to agree 
with Mr. Stewart. See his Elements, vol. ii., chap. 1, and his 
Account of Reid, supra, p. 27, b." — Sir W. Hamilton, Reid's 
Works, note A, p. 743. 

" Truth implies something really existing. An assertion 
respecting the future may be probable or improbable, it may be 
honest or deceitful, it may be prudent or imprudent, it may 
have any relation we please to the mind of the person who 
makes it, or of him who hears it, but it can have no relation 
at all to a thing which is not. The Stoics said, Cicero will either 
be Consul or not. One of these is true, therefore the event 
is certain. But truth cannot be predicated of that which is 
not." — Coplestone, Enquiry into Necessity, Preface, p. 15. 

" Truth implies a report of something that is; reality denotes 
the existence of a thing, whether affirmed and reported of or 
not. The thing reported either is or is not; the report is either 
true or false. The things themselves are sometimes called 
truths, instead of facts or realities. And assertions concerning 
matters of fact are called facts. Thus we hear of false facts, 
a thing literally impossible and absurd." — Coplestone, Remains, 
p. 105. 

" No pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage- 
ground of truth (a hill not to be commanded, and where the 
air is always clear and serene), and to see the errors and wan- 
derings and mists and tempests in the vale below ; so always 
that this prospect be with pity, and not with swelling or pride." 
— Bacon's Essay on Truth. — V. Falsity, Reality. 
TRUTHS (First) are such as do not depend on any prior truth. 
They carry evidence in themselves. They are assented to as 
soon as they are understood. The assent given to them is so 
full, that while experience may confirm or familiarize it, it can 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 537 

TRUTHS— 

scarcely be said to increase it, and so clear that no proposition 
contradicting them can be admitted as more clear. That a 
whole is greater than any of its parts ; that a change implies 
the operation of a cause ; that qualities do not exist without a 
substance ; that there are other beings in the world besides 
ourselves; may be given as examples of first truths. These 
truths are and must be assented to by every rational being, as 
soon as the terms expressing them are understood. They have 
been called xotvul hvoiui, communes notitice, natural judgments, 
primitive beliefs, fundamental laws of the human mind, prin- 
ciples of common sense, principles of reason, principles of 
reasoning, &c. 

. . . " To determine how great is the number of these 
propositions is impossible ; for they are not in the soul as pro- 
positions*, but it is an undoubted truth that a mind awaking 
out of nothing into being, and presented with particular objects, 
would not fail at once to judge concerning them according to, 
and by the force of, some such innate principles as these, or just 
as a man would judge who had learnt these explicit proposi- 
tions ; which indeed are so nearly allied to its own nature, that 
they may be called almost a part of itself. .... There- 
fore I take the mind or soul of man not to be so perfectly 
indifferent to receive all impressions as a rasa tabula, or white 
paper. ... u Hence there may be some practical prin- 
ciples also innate in the foregoing sense, though not in the 
form of propositions."-— Watts, Philosopli. Essays, sect. 4 and 3. 

" From the earliest records of time, and following the course 
of history, we everywhere find the principles of common sense, 
as universal elements of human thought and action. No vio- 
lence can suppress, no sophisms obscure them. They steadily 
and unerringly guide us through the revolutions and destruction 
of nations and empires. The eye pierces with rapid glance- 
through the long vista of ages amid the sanguinary conflicts, 
the territorial aggrandizements, and chequered features of states 
and kingdoms ; and from the wreck of all that is debasing, 
glorious, or powerful, we still recognize the great and universal 
truths of humanity. One generation passes away after another, 
but they remain for ever the same. They are the life-blood 



538 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

TRUTHS— 

of human nature ; the intellectual air we breathe. Without 
them society could not for a single hour subsist ; governments, 
laws, institutions, religion, the manners and customs of men, 
bear the indelible imprint of their universality and indestructi- 
bility. They are revealed in the daily and hourly actions, 
thoughts, and speech of all men ; and must ever form the basis 
of all systems of philosophy ; for without them it can only be a 
phantom, a delusion, an unmeaning assemblage of words." — 
Van de Weyer. 

On the nature, origin, and validity of first truths, the 
following authors may be consulted : — Lord Herbert, De Veri- 
tate; Buffier, Treatise of First Truths; Reid, Inquiry and 
Essays on Intell. Pow. ; Sir Will. Hamilton, ReioVs Works, 
Appendix, note a. — V. Common Sense, Reminiscence. 
TIHPE (tvko$, typus, from tv7tt&), to strike). 

" Great father of the gods, when for our crimes 
Thou send'st some heavy judgment on the times,— 
Some tyrant king, the terror of his age, 
The type and true vicegerent of thy rage ! 
Thus punish him." — Dryden, Persius,$a,t. 3. 

" So St. Hierome offered wine, not water, in the type of his 
blood." — Bishop Taylor, Of Real Presence, sect. 6. 

Among the Greeks the first model which statuaries made in 
clay of their projected work was called rvnog. Type means 
the first rude form or figure of anything — an adumbration or 
shadowing forth. The thing fashioned according to it was the 
ectype, and the type in contrast the protype. But archetype 
was applied to the original idea, model, or exemplar, not 
copied, but of which other things were copies. 

" A type is an example of any class, for instance, a species 
of a genus, which is considered as eminently possessing the 
characters of the class." — Whewell, Induct Sciences, viii., 
ii., 10. 

For the meaning of a type in the arts of design, see Sir 
Edmund Head, Hist, of Painting, Preface, p. 39. — V. Homo- 
type. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 539 

UBIETY (iibi, where) is the presence of one thing to another, or 
the presence of a thing in place. The schoolmen distinguished 
ubiety as — 

1. Circumscriptive, by "which a body is so in one place that 
its parts are answerable to the parts of space in which it is, and 
exclude every other body. 

2. Definitive, as when a human spirit is limited or defined 
in its presence to the same place as a human body. 

3. Repletive, as when the Infinite Spirit is present through 
every portion of space. 

This last is sometimes called ubiquity, and means the 
Divine Omnipresence. — Leibnitz, Nouv. Essais, liv. ii., chap. 
23, sect. 21. 

UNCONDITIONED. — " This term has been employed in a two- 
fold signification, as denoting either the entire absence of all 
restriction, or more widely, the entire absence of all relation. 
The former we regard as its only legitimate application.'' — 
Calderwood, Phil, of the Infinite, p. 36. 

In the philosophy of Kant it is that which is absolutely and 
in itself, or internally possible, and is exempted from the con- 
ditions circumscribing a thing in time or space. — V. Absolute, 
Infinite. 

UNDERSTANDING}. — "Perhaps the safer use of the term, for 
general purposes, is to take it as the mind, or rather as the 
man himself considered as a concipient as well as a percipient 
being, and reason as a power supervening.* ' — Coleridge, States- 
man s Manual, App. b, p. 264. 

" In its wider acceptation, understanding is the entire power 
of perceiving and conceiving, exclusive of the sensibility ; the 
power of dealing with the impressions of sense, and composing 
them into wholes according to a law of unity ; and in its most 
comprehensive meaning it includes even simple apprehension. 
Thus taken at large it is the whole spontaneity of the repre- 
senting mind ; that which puts together the multifarious 
materials supplied by the passive faculty of sense, or pure 
receptivity. But we may consider the understanding in another 
point of view, not as the simple faculty of thought, which pro- 
duces intuitions and conceptions spontaneously, and comes into 
play as the mere tool or organ of the spiritual mind : but as a 



540 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

UNBER§TAN1)ING- 

power that is exercised on objects which it supplies to itself, 
which, does not simply think and reflect, but which examines 
its thoughts, arranges and compares them ; and this for scien- 
tific, not for directly practical, purposes. To intellectualize 
upon religion, and to receive it by means of the understanding 
are two different things, and the common exertion of this 
faculty should of course be distinguished from that special 
use of it, in which one man differs from another, by reason 
of stronger original powers of mind, or greater improvement 
of them by exercise." — Coleridge, Aids to Reflection, vol. ii., 
p. 38. 

a The understanding is the medial faculty, or faculty of 
means, as reason on the other hand is the source of ideas or 
ultimate ends. By reason we determine the ultimate end ; by 
the understanding we are enabled to select and adopt the 
appropriate means for the attainment of, or approximation to, 
this end, according to circumstances. But an ultimate end 
must of necessity be an idea, that is, that which is not repre- 
sentable by the senses, and has no correspondent in nature, or 

the world of the senses Understanding and sense 

constitute the natural mind of man, mind of the flesh, fyovvifAei 
gk())c6s, as likewise if/v%ix,$ avvzaig, the intellectual power of the 
living or animal soul, which St. Paul everywhere contradis- 
tinguishes from the spirit, that is, the power resulting from 
the union and co-influence of the will and reason — aoQia, or 
wisdom." — Coleridge, Notes on English Div., vol. ii., p. 338. 

" The reason and the understanding have not been steadily 

distinguished by English writers To understand 

anything is to apprehend it according to certain assumed ideas 
and rules ; we do not include in the meaning of the word an 
examination of the ground of the ideas and rules by reference 
to which we understand the thing. We understand a language, 
when we apprehend what is said, according to the established 
vocabulary and grammar of the language ; without inquiring 
how the words came to have their meaning, or what is the 
ground of the grammatical rules. We understand the sense 
without reasoning about the etymology and syntax. 

" Reasoning may be requisite to understanding. We may 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 541 

have to reason about the syntax in order to understand the 
sense. But understanding leaves still room for reasoning. 
Also we may understand what is not conformable to reason : 
as when we understand a man's arguments, and think them 
unfounded in reason. 

" We reason in order to deduce rides from first principles, 
or from one another. But the rules and principles which 
must be expressed when we reason, may be only implied when 
we understand. We may understand the sense of a speech 
without thinking of rules of grammar. 

" The reason is employed both in understanding and in 
reasoning ; but the principles which are explicitly asserted in 
reasoning, are only implicitly applied in understanding. The 
reason includes both the faculty of seeing first principles, and 
the reasoning faculty by which we obtain other principles. 
The understanding is the faculty of applying principles, how- 
ever obtained." — Whewell, Elements of Morality, Introd., 
sect. 11. 

Anselm considered the facts of consciousness under the four- 
fold arrangement of Sensibility, Will, Reason, and Intelligence ; 
and showed that the two last are not identical. — Matter, 
Hist de la Philosopli. dans ses Rapports avec Religion, p. 148. 
Paris, 1854. 

•• * There is one faculty,' says Aristotle (Eth., lib. 6), • by 
which man comprehends and embodies in his belief first 
principles which cannot be proved, which he must receive 
from some authority ; there is another by which, when a 
new fact is laid before him, he can show that it is in conformity 
with some principle possessed before. One process resembles 
the collection of materials for building— the other them orderly 
arrangement. One is intuition, — the other logic. One uov^ 
the other e-iar^u^.' Or to use a modern distinction, one is 
reason in its highest sense, the other understanding. V — Sewell, 
Christ. Mor., chap. 21. 

" I use the term understanding, not for the noetic faculty, 
intellect proper, or place of principles, but for the dianoctic, or 
discursive faculty in its widest signification, for the faculty ot 1 ' 
relations or comparisons ; and thus in the meaning in which 



542 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

UNDERSTANDING— 

Verstand is now employed by the Germans.'" — Sir W. Hamil- 
ton, Discussions, &c, 8vo, Lond., 1852, p. 4, note. 

u Understanding, intellect (Verstand) is the faculty which 
conjoins the diversity which is furnished us by the senses, and 
forms into a whole the sensible representations which are 
given to us. The word Verstand is used occasionally as being 
synonymous with Vernunft (reason), and is the faculty of cog- 
nition in general, and in this sense the critic of pure reason might 
be termed also the critic of pure understanding. The discursive 
understanding is the faculty of cognizing objects, not imme- 
diately, but through conceptions. And as intuition belongs to 
cognition, and as a faculty of a complete spontaneousness of 
intuition, or which perceives the intuition not passively, but 
produces spontaneously from itself, a cognition-faculty different 
from, and independent of, what is the sensibility, would be, 
consequently, understanding in the widest sense; we might 
think such an intuitive, envisaging understanding (intellectus 
intuitivus) negatively, as a non-discursive understanding. The 
gemeiner Menschen Verstand and the Gemeinsinn are sensus 
communis logicus, or common sense ; and the gesunder Verstand, 
sound sense. Sir J. Mackintosh prefers the term intellect to 
that of understanding as the source of conceptions." — Haywood, 
Crit. of Pure Reason, p. 605. — V. Reason, Intellect. 

UNIFICATION is the act of so uniting ourselves with another as 
to form one being. Unification with God was the final aim of 
the Neo-Platonicians. And unification with God is also one of 
the beliefs of the Chinese philosopher, Lao Tseu. 

UNITARIAN (A) is a believer in one God. It is the same in 
meaning as Monoiheist. In this large sense it is applicable 
to all Christians, for they all believe in the unity of the Divine 
nature ; and also to Jews and Mahommedans. It may even 
include Deists, or those who believe in God on grounds of 
reason alone. But the name is commonly opposed to Trini- 
tarian, and is applied to those who, accepting the Christian 
revelation, believe in God as existing in one person, and 
acknowledge Jesus Christ as his messenger to men. 

UNITY or ONENESS (unum, one) is a property of being. If 
anything is, it is one and not many. Omne ens est unum. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY, 543 

UNITY— 

Unity is defined to be that property, qua ens est indivisum 
in se et divisum db omni alio. 

Locke (Essay on Hum. Understand., b. ii., ch. 16) makes 
unity synonymous with number. But Aristotle (Metaphys., 
lib. iv., cap. 6, lib. x., cap. 1) more correctly makes unity the 
element of number, and says that unity is indivisibleness. That 
which is indivisible, and has no position, is a monad. That 
which is indivisible, but has a position, is a point. That which 
is divisible only in one sense is a line. That which is divisible 
in two senses is a plane. And that which is divisible in three 
senses is a body in respect of quantity. 

According to Aristotle (Metaphys., lib. x., cap. 1), the modes 
of unity are reducible to four, that of continuity, especially 
natural continuity, which is not the result of contact or tie — 
that of a whole naturally, which has figure and form, and not 
like things united by violence — that of an individual or that 
which is numerically indivisible — and that of a universal, 
which is indivisible in form and in respect of science. 

Unity has been divided into transcendental or entitative, by 
which a being is indivisible in itself — logical, by which things 
like each other are classed together for the purposes of science 
* — and moral, by which many are embodied as one for the pur- 
poses of life, as many citizens make one society, many soldiers 
one army. 

Unity is opposed to plurality, which is nothing but plures 
entitates aut imitates. 

Unity is specific or numerical. The former may rather be 
called similitude, and the latter identity. — Hutcheson, Metaphys., 
pars. 3, cap. 3. 

u The essential diversity of the ideas unity and sameness was 
among the elementary principles of the old logicians ; and the 
sophisms grounded on the confusion of these terms have been 
ably exposed by Leibnitz in his critique on Wissowatius." — 
Coleridge, Second Lay Sermon, p. 367. See also Aids to 
Reflection, p. 157. — V. Distinction", Identity. 
UIVIVERSAliS. — " The same colour being observed to-day in chalk 
or snow, which the mind yesterday received from milk, it con- 
siders that appearance alone, makes it a representative of all 



544 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

UNIVERSAJLS— 

of that kind, and having given it the name of whiteness, it by 
that sound signifies the same quality, wheresoever to be ima- 
gined or met with, and thus universals, whether ideas or terms, 
are made." — Locke, Essay on Hum. Understand., book ii., 
ch. 11. 

Universal terms may denote, 1. A mathematical universality, 
as all circles (no exception) have a centre and circumference. 
2. A physical universality, as all men use words to express 
their thoughts (though the dumb cannot). 3. A moral univer- 
sality, as all men are governed by affection rather than by 
reason. 
Universal (unum versus alia) means, according to its composition, 
one towards many. It is denned by Aristotle {Lib. de Interpret., 
cap. 5), u that which by its nature is fit to be predicated of 
many." And (Metaphys., lib. v., cap. 13) "that which by its 
nature has a fitness or capacity to be in many." It implies 
unity with community, or unity shared in by many. 

Universals have been divided into, 1. Metaphysical, or uni- 
versalia ante rem. 2. Physical, or universalia in re. 3. Logical, 
or universalia post rem. 

By the first are meant those archetypal forms, according to 
which all things were created. As existing in the Divine mind 
and furnishing the pattern for the Divine working, these may 
be said to correspond with the ideas of Plato. 

By universals in the second sense are meant certain common 
natures, which, one in themselves, are diffused over or shared 
in by many — as rationality by all men. 

By universals in the third sense are meant general notions 
framed by the human intellect, and predicated of many things, 
on the ground of their possessing common properties — as 
animal, which may be predicated of man, lion, horse, &c. 

Realists give prominence to universals in the first and second 
signification. Nominalists hold that the true meaning of uni- 
versals is that assigned in the third sense. While concep- 
tualists hold an intermediate view. — Reid, Intell. Pow., essay 
v., chap. 6.; Thomson, Outline of Laws of Thought, 2d edit., 
sect. 23. 

In ancient philosophy the universals were called prcedicables 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 545 

UNIVERSAL— 

(q. v.), and were arranged in five classes, genus, species, dif- 
ferentia, proprium, and accidens. It is argued that there can 
be neither more nor fewer, For whatever is predicated of many 
is predicated essentially or accidentally ; if essentially, either of 
the whole essence, and then it is a species ; of a common part 
of the essence, and then it is a genus; or of a proper part of the 
essence, and then it is the differentia essentialis ; if accidentally, 
it either flows from the essence of the subject, and is its pro- 
prium, or does not flow from its essence, and is its accidens. 

Or it may be argued thus — universality is a fitness of being 
predicated of many, which implies identity or sameness, or at 
least resemblance. There will therefore be as many classes of 
universals as there are kinds of identity. Now, when one thing 
is said to be the same with another, it is so either essentially or 
accidentally ; if essentially, it is so either completely or incom- 
pletely ; if completely, it gives a species ; if incompletely, it is so in 
form, and gives the differentia, or in matter and gives the 
genus ; if accidentally, it is the same either necessarily and 
inseparably, and constitutes the proprium — or contingently and 
separably, and is the accidens. — Tellez, Summa, pars. 1, dis. v., 
sect. 1. But the fivefold classification of univer sals is censured 
by Derodon, Log., pars. 2, cap. 6. See also Thomson, Outline 
of Laws of Thought, sect. 37. 
UNIVOCAIi WORDS (una, one; vox, word or meaning) u are 
such as signify but one idea, or at least but one sort of thing ; 
the words book, bible, fish, house, elephant, may be called 
nnivocal words, for I know not that they signify anything else 
but those ideas to which they are generally affixed." — Watts, 
Log., b. i., c. 4. 

" I think it is a good division in Aristotle, that the same 
word maybe applied to different things in three ways : uni- 
vocally, analogically, and equivocally. Univocally, when the 
things are species of the same genus ; analogically, when the 
things are related by some similitude or analogy ; equivocally, 
when they have no relation but a common name." — Reid, 
Correspondence, p. 75. 

In Logic a common term is called univocal in respect of those 
things or persons to which it is applicable in the same siirnifica- 
2 N 

1 



516 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

UIVIVOCAIi— 

tion, as the term "man." Whately observes that the "usual 
divisions of nouns into univocal, equivocal, and analogous, and 
into nouns of the first and second intention, are not, strictly 
speaking, divisions of words, but divisions of the manner of 
employing them ; the same word may be employed either uni- 
vocally, equivocally, or analogously ; either in the first inten- 
tion or the second." — Whately, Log., b. ii., ch. 5, § 1. 

V. Analogous, Equivocal, Intention. 
UTIIilTY, said Kant {Metaphys. des Mceurs, p. 15), u is nothing 
scarcely but a frame or case which may serve to facilitate the 
sale of a picture, or draw to it the attention of those who are 
not connoisseurs ; but cannot recommend it to true lovers of 
the art, or determine its price." 

" What is useful only has no value in itself; but derives all 
its merit from the end for which it is useful." — Reid, Act. Pow., 
essay v., ch. 5. 

" Utility is an idea essentially relative, which supposes a 
higher term." — Manuel de Philosopli., p. 344. 

The doctrine of utility in morals is, that actions are right 
because they are useful. It has been held under various forms. 
Some who maintain that utility or beneficial tendency is what 
makes an action right, hold that a virtuous agent may be 
prompted by self-love (as Paley), or by benevolence (as Ruther- 
forth), or partly by both (as Hume). And the beneficial 
tendency of actions has by some been viewed solely in reference 
to this life (as Hume and Bentham), while by others it has 
been extended to a future state (as Paley), and the obligation 
to do such actions has been represented as arising from the 
rewards and punishments of that future state, as made known 
by the light of nature and by revelation (as D wight). 

The fundamental objection to the doctrine of utility in all 
its modifications, is that taken by Dr. Reid {Act. Pow., essay 
v., ch. 5), viz., " that agreeableness and utility are not moral 
conceptions, nor have they any connection with morality. 
What a man does, merely because it is agreeable, is not virtue. 
Therefore the Epicurean system was justly thought by Cicero, 
and the best moralists among the ancients, to subvert morality, 
and to substitute another principle in its room ; and this 









UTTLITY— 



zre." " E: 

racta omni utilitate, sine mttis 

-: r:s.?i: '...z-S-zri."—!*- P.'z- 



:zs. ::.. 14. 



VELLEITY 



it or inactive wish or 

i : : z: rzerrrz : rz:r~ 
■.: likes z si: bu: — zl z;: 



::. bz: 



MzZrr. — r, V 
TERACTTY is :z 



UL 



.::••' Z;tZ iz:: exe:z:.::z." — 



of credulity as 
distrust nor de< 

z.rz :z;z :'zf; 
e^irlr-vfi f:r : 
:_:...".: ;,:::';■; :rz 
TIRBAL is 



but pieces of mockery and hypocritical compliment." — Hale, 
CV';:. : > -".-i 4 _-z.';z' :-.,». 

Sometimes the question turns on the meaning and e:: 
of the terms employed : sometimes on the things signified by 
them. If it be made to appear, therefore, that the or 
sides of a certain question may be held by parties not differing 
in their opinion of the matter in hand, then that question 



548 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

VERBAL— 

may be pronounced verbal; or depending on the different 
senses in which they employ the terms. If, on the contrary, 
it appears that they employ the terms in the same sense, but 
still differ as to the application of one of them to the other, 
then it may be pronounced that the question is real — that they 
differ as to the opinions they hold of the things or questions." 
— Whately. 

VIRTUAL is opposed to actual. — u It is not, in this sense, the 
foundation of Christian doctrine, but it contains it all; not 
only in general, but in special; not only virtual, but actual; 
not mediate, but immediate ; for a few lines would have served 
for a foundation general, virtual, and mediate." — Bp. Taylor, 
Dissuas. from Popery, sect. 8. 

A thing has a virtual existence when it has all the con- 
ditions necessary to its actual existence. The statue exists 
virtually in the brass or iron, the oak in the acorn. The 
cause virtually contains the effect. In the philosophy of 
Aristotle, the distinction between Ivi/apt;, and ivcihkxtiK, or 
hegyeia, i. e., potentia or virtus, and actus is frequent and 
fundamental. 

u A letter of credit does not in reality contain the sum which 
it represents : that sum is only really in the coffer of the 
banker. Yet the letter contains the sum in a certain sense, 
since it holds its place. This sum is in still another sense, 
contained ; it is virtually in the credit of the banker who 
subscribes the letter. To express these differences in the 
language of Descartes, the sum is contained formally in the 
coffer of the banker, objectively in the letter which he sub- 
scribed, and eminently in the credit which enabled him to 
subscribe ; and thus the coffer contains the reality formal of 
the sum, the letter the reality objective, and the credit of the 
banker the reality eminent" — Royer Collard, (Euvres de Reid, 
torn, ii., p. 356. 

VIRTUE. — u For if virtue be an election annexed unto our nature, 
and consisteth in a mean, which is determined by reason, and 
that mean is the very myddes of two things vicious, the one fe 
surplusage, the other in lacke," &c— Sir T. Elyot, The Gover- 
nour, b. ii., c. 10. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 549 

VIRTUE— 

Virtus, in Latin, from vir, a man, and doery in Greek, from 
" Aoyic, Mars, give us the primary idea of manly strength. 
Virtue then implies opposition or struggle. In man, the 
struggle is between reason and passion — between right and 
wrong. To hold by the former is virtue, to yield to the latter 
is vice. According to Aristotle, virtue is a practical habit 
acquired by doing virtuous acts. He called those virtues intel- 
lectual, by which the intellect was strengthened, and moral, 
by which the life was regulated. Another ancient division 
was that of the cardinal virtues — which correspond to the 
moral virtues. The theological virtues were faitli, hope, and 
charity. 

The opposite of virtue is vice. 

Aristotle is quoted by Bacon in Seventh Book Of the 
Advancement of Learning, as saying, 

" As beasts cannot be said to have vice or virtue, so neither 
can the gods ; for as the condition of the latter is something 
more elevated than virtue, so that of the former is something 
different from vice." — Moffet, Trans., p. 200. 

As virtue implies trial or difficulty, it cannot be predicated 
of God. He is holy. 

Kant frequently insists upon the distinction between virtue 
and holiness. In a holy being, the will is uniformly and 
without struggle in accordance with the moral law. In a 
virtuous being, the will is liable to the solicitations of the 
sensibility, in opposition or resistance to the dictates of reason. 
This is the only state of which man is capable in this life. But 
he ought to aim and aspire to the attainment of the higher or 
holy state, in which the will without struggle is always in 
accordance with reason. The Stoics thought the beau ideal of 
virtue, or the complete subjection of sense and appetite to 
reason, attainable in this life. — V. Duty, Merit, Obligation, 
Rectitude, Standard, Nature of Things. 
VOIilTIOlV (volo, to will) a is an act of the mind knowingly 
exerting that dominion it takes itself to have over any part of 
the man, by employing it in, or withholding it from, any par- 
ticular action." — Locke, Essay on Hum. Understand., book ii., 
chap. 21, sect. 15. 



550 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

YOMTIOIV— 

" There is an error which lies under the word volition. 
Under that word you include both the final perception of the 
understanding which is passive, and also the^rs^ operation or 
exertion of the active faculty of self-motive power. These two 
you think to be necessarily connected. I think there is no 
connection at all between them ; and that in their not being 
connected lies the difference between action and passion ; which 
difference is the essence of liberty." — Dr. Sam. Clarke, Second 
Letter to a Gentleman, p. 410. 

Things are sought as ends or as means. 

The schoolmen distinguished three acts of will, circa finem, 
Velleity, Intention, and Fruition. Gen. iii. 6: — When the 
woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was 
pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one 
wise (this is velleity), she took thereof (this is intention) and 
did eat (this is fruition). There are also three acts, circa, 
media, viz., consent, approving of means — election, or choosing 
the most fit, and application, use, or employing of them. — V. 
Election, Will. 



W.ELL-BEIJVG — " This is beyond all doubt, and indisputable," 
says Leighton in his Theological Lectures, a that all men wish 
well to themselves ; nor can the mind of man divest itself of 
this propensity, without divesting itself of its being. This is 
what the schoolmen mean when in their manner of expression 
they say that ' the will (voluntas, not arbitrium) is carried 
towards happiness, not simply as will, but as nature.' l No 
man hateth his own flesh. 7 " 

u One conclusion follows inevitably from the preceding posi- 
tion," says Coleridge {Aids to Reflection, vol. i., p. 20, edit. 
1848), " namely, that this propensity can never be legitimately 
made the principle of morality, even because it is no part or 
appurtenance of the moral will : and because the proper object 
of the moral principle is to limit and control this propensity, 
and to determine in what it may be, and in what it ought to 
be, gratified ; while it is the business of philosophy to instruct 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 551 

the understanding, and the office of religion to convince the 
whole man, that otherwise than as a regulated, and of course 
therefore a subordinate, end, this propensity, innate and 
inalienable though it be, can never be realized or fulfilled.' ' — 
V. Happiness. 
WHOL.E (oho;). — u There are wholes of different kinds ; for, in the 
first place, there is an extended whole, of which the parts lie 
contiguous, such as body and space. Secondly, There is a 
whole, of which the parts are separated or discrete, such as 
number, which, from thence, is called quantity discrete. Thirdly, 
There is a whole, of which the parts do not exist together, but 
only by succession, such as time, consisting of minutes, hours, 
and days, or as many more parts as we please, but which all 
exist successively, or not together. Fourthly, There is what 
may be called a logical whole, of which the several specieses 
are parts. Animal, for example, is a ivhole, in this sense, and 
man, dog, horse, &c, are the several parts of it. And fifthly, 
The different qualities of the same substance, may be said to 
be parts of that substance." — Monboddo, Ancient Metaphys., 
book ii., chap. 12. 

A whole is either divisible or indivisible. 

Every whole as a whole is one and undivided. But though 
not divided, a whole may be divisible in thought, by being 
reduced to its elements mentally, or it may be altogether 
indivisible even in thought. This latter is what metaphysicians 
call Totiun perfectionale, and is only applicable to Deity, who 
is wholly in the universe, and wholly in every part of it. 

A divisible whole is distinguished as potential, or that which 
is divisible into parts by which it is not constituted, as animal 
may be divided into man and brute, but is not constituted 
by them ; and actual, or that which is divisible into parts by 
which it is constituted, as man may be divided into soul and 
body. 

An actual whole is either physical or metaphysical. A 
physical whole is constituted by physical composition, and is 
integral when composed of the integrant parts of matter, or 
essential when composed of matter and form. A metaphysical 
whole is constituted by metaphysical composition, which is 



552 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

WHOLE- 

fourfold : 1. A whole made up of genus and differentia is an 
essential specific whole — as man, in so far as lie is a species of 
animal, is made up of the genus (animal) and the differentia 
(rational). 2. A whole made up of the specific nature and the 
individual differentia, is an essential numerical whole. 3. A 
whole of existence contains a singular essence and existence 
added. 4. A whole of subsistence has subsistence added to 
existence. — Baronius, Metaphys. Generalise sect. 15. 

According to Derodon (Log., 3 pars., p. 70), an essential 
whole is that from which if any part be taken the being perishes 
— as man in respect of his body and soul. An integral whole 
is that from which, if any part be taken, the being is not entire 
but mutilated. Man with all his members is an integral whole ; 
cut off a limb, he is not an integral, but still an essential whole. 

" A ivhole is composed of distinct parts. Composition may 
be physical, metaphysical, or logical 

" A physical whole is made up of parts distinct and separate, 
and is natural, as a tree, artificial, as a house, moral, or con- 
ventional, as a family, a city, &c. 

" A metaphysical whole arises from metaphysical composition, 
as potence and act, essence and existence, &c. 

" A logical ivhole is composed by genus and differentia, and 
is called a higher notion, which can be resolved into notions 
under it, as genus into species, species into lower species. 
Thus, animal is divided into rational and irrational, knowledge 
into science, art, experience, opinion, belief. 

" Of the parts into which a whole is divisible, some are 
essential, so that if one is wanting the being ceases, as the head 
or heart in man ; others are integral, of which if one or more 
be wanting the being is not entire, as in man, an eye or arms ; 
others are constituent, such as concur to form the substance 
of the thing, as oxygen and hydrogen in water." — Peemans, 
Introd. ad. Philosophy p. 72. 
WHY? — As an interrogative, this word is employed in three 
senses, viz., — " By what proof (or reason)?" u From what 
cause ? " " For what purpose ? " This last is commonly called 
the u final cause, 11 — e. g. 9 " Why is this prisoner guilty of the 
crime ?'■ «' Why does a stone fall to the earth?" " Why 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 553 

WHY?— 

did you go to London?" Much confusion has arisen from 
not distinguishing these different inquiries. — Whately. Log., 
Appendix 1. 
WIJLLu — Some modern philosophers, especially among the French, 
have employed the term activity as synonymous with will. But 
the former is of wider signification than the latter. Activity 
is the power of producing change, whatever the change may 
be. Will is the power of producing acts of willing. — V. 
Volition. 

<c Even* man is conscious of a power to determine, '' says 
Dr. Reid (Act. Poiv., essay ii., ch. 1), "in things which he 
conceives to depend upon his determination. To this power 
we give the name of will." 

" Will is an ambiguous word, being sometimes put for the 
faculty of willing ; sometimes for the act of that faculty, 
besides other meanings. But volition always signifies the act 
of willing, and nothing else. Willingness, I think, is opposed 
to unwillingness or aversion. A man is willing to do what he 
has no aversion to do, or what he has some desire to do, 
though perhaps he has not the opportunity ; and I think this is 
never called volition." — Correspondence of Dr. Reid, p. 79. 

" By the term will I do not mean to express a more or less 
highly developed faculty of desiring; bat that innate intellectual 
energy which, unfolding itself from all the other forces of the 
mind, like a flower from its petals, radiates through the whole 
sphere of our activity — a faculty which we are better able to 
feel than to define, and which we might, perhaps, most appro- 
priately designate as the purely practical faculty of man.'' — 
Feuchtersleben, Dietetics of the Soul. 

" Appetite is the will's solicitor, and the will is appetite's 
controller ; what we covet according to the one, by the other 
we often reject." — Hooker, Eccles. Pol., book i. 

On the difference between desiring and willing, see Locke, 
Essay on Hum. Understand., book ii., ch. 21 : Reid. Act. 
Pow., essay ii., ch. 2 ; Stewart, Act. and Mor. Pow., Append., 
p 471. 

By some philosophers this difference has been overlooked, 
and they have completely identified desire and volition. 



554 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

Wllili— 

u What is desire," says Dr. Priestley {Philosoph. Necess., p. 
35), u besides a wish to obtain some apprehended good? And 
is not every wish a volition ? Every volition is nothing more 
than a desire, viz., a desire to accomplish some end, which end 
may be considered as the object of the passion or affection." 

u Volition," says Mr. Belsham, u is a modification of the 
passion of desire." Mr. James Mill, in his Analysis of the 
Hum. Mind, holds that the will is nothing but the desire that 
is most powerful at the time. Dr. Thomas Brown, in his Lec- 
tures on Mor. Philosophy, has not spoken of the faculty of will 
or of acts of volition as separate from our desires. And in his 
Essay on Cause and Effect, sect. 3, he has said, " Those brief 
feelings which the body immediately obeys are commonly 
termed volitions, while the more lasting wishes are simply 
denominated desires." 

The view opposed to this is strongly asserted in the following 
passage : — " We regard it as of great moment that the will 
should be looked on as a distinct power or energy of the mind. 
Not that we mean to represent it as exercised apart from all 
other faculties ; on the contrary, it blends itself with every 
other power. It associates itself with our intellectual decisions 
on the one hand, and our emotional attachments on the other, 
but contains an important element which cannot be resolved 
into either the one or the other, or into both combined. The 
other powers, such as the sensibility, the reason, the conscience, 
may influence the will, but they cannot constitute it, nor yield 
its peculiar workings. We have only by consciousness to look 
into our souls, as the will is working, to discover a power, 
which, though intimately connected with the other attributes 
of mind, even as they are closely related to each other, does 
yet stand out distinctly from them, with its peculiar functions 
and its own province. We hold that there cannot be an 
undertaking more perilous to the best interests of philosophy 
and humanity, than the attempt to resolve the will into any- 
thing inferior to itself. In particular it may be, and should be 
distinguished from that with which it has been so often con- 
founded, the emotional part of man's nature." 

According to Bitter {Hist, of Anc. Philosophy vol. iii., p. 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. OOO 

555), "it was a principle with the Stoics that will and desire 
are one with thought, and may be resolved into it." Hence 
their saying, Omne actum est in intellectu. And hence they 
maintained that passion was just an erroneous judgment. But 
this is to confound faculties which are distinct. By the intellect 
we know or understand, by the sensitivity we feel or desire, 
and by the will we determine to do or not to do, to do this or 
to do that. 

Intellectus est prior voluntate, non enim est voluntas nisi de 
bono intellecto. — Thomas Aquinas, Sum. Theol., EL, 1, qusest. 83. 

Ea quce sunt in intellectu sunt principia eorum quoe sunt in 
affectu, in quantum scilicet bonum intellectum movet affectum. — 
Ibidem, ii., 2, qusest. 7, art. 2. 

In what sense the understanding moves the will is shown by 
Aquinas. — Sum. TheoL, ii., 1, qusest. 9, art. 1. 

" Whether or no the judgment does certainly and infallibly 
command and draw after it the acts of the will, this is certain, 
it does of necessity precede them, and no man can fix his love 
upon anything till his judgment reports it to the will as 
amiable." — South, Sermon on Matt, x., 37. 

On the question, whether the connection between the intellect 
and the will be direct or indirect, see Locke, Essay on Hum. 
Understand., b. i., ch. 21 ; Jonathan Edwards, Inquiry, part i. r 
sect. 2 ; Dr. Turnbull, Christ. Philosophy p. 196. 
Will (Freedom of). — "This is the essential attribute of a will, 
and contained in the very idea, that whatever determines the 
will acquires this power from a previous determination of the 
will itself. The will is ultimately self-determined, or it is no 
longer a will under the law of perfect freedom, but a nature 
under the mechanism of cause and effect." — Coleridge, Aids to 
Reflection, vol. i., p. 227. 

u We need only to reflect on our own experience to be con- 
vinced that the man makes the motive, and not the motive the 
man. What is a strong motive to one man, is no motive at all 
to another. If, then, the man determines the motive, what 
determines the man to a good and worth}' act, we will say, or 
a virtuous course of conduct ? The intelligent will, or the 
self- determining power? True, in part it is; and therefore 



556 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

the will is pre-eminently, the spiritual constituent in our being. 
But will any man admit, that his own will is the only and suffi- 
cient determinant of all he is, and all he does? Is nothing to 
be attributed to the harmony of the system to which it belongs, 
and to the pre-established fitness of the objects and agents, 
known and unknown, that surround him, as acting on the will, 
though, doubtless, with it likewise? a process which the co- 
instantaneous, yet reciprocal action of the air and the vital 
energy of the lungs in breathing, may help to render intel- 
ligible." — Coleridge, Aids to Reflection, vol. i., p. 44. 

u It is very true that in willing an act, or in any act of self- 
determination, I am or may be induced by a variety of motives 
or impulses — my will may be moved ; but this does not exclude 
the power of origination, for the consent even to the outward 
inducement or stimulus, still requires this unique act of self- 
determination in order to the energy requisite to the fulfilment 
of the deed. That it is so, who shall doubt who is conscious 
of the power ? or if he believe that he has not this conscious- 
ness he belies his own nature. The actuation of the individual 
will not only does not exclude self-determination, but implies 
it— implies that, though actuated, but actuated only because 
already self- operant, it is not compelled or acting under the 
law of outward causation. How often do we not see that a 
stern resolve has produced a series of actions, which, sustained 
by the inward energy of the man, has ended in its complete 
achievement? Contrast this with the life and conduct of the 
wayward, the fickle and the unsteady, and it is impossible not 
to find the inward conviction strengthened and confirmed, that 
the will is the inward and enduring essence of man's being. 1 ' — 
Green, Mental Dynamics, p. 54. 

" The central point of our consciousness — that which makes 
each man what he is in distinction from every other man — that 
which expresses the real concrete essence of the mind apart 
from its regulated laws and formal processes, is the will. Will 
expresses power, spontaneity, the capacity of acting inde- 
pendently and for ourselves." — Morell, Phil, of Relig., p. 3. 

" Will may be defined to be the faculty which is apprehended 
in the consciousness, as the originating power of the personal 



v;CABTTLARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 00 < 

WILL- 

sel£ X: : thai it can be seen to be an absolute power of self- 
origination : it is possible that it may always be determined 
rbrees which do not fall within the sphere of con- 
1 : b : far as apprehension can reach, the phe- 
nomena of the will appear to have their origin in an activity of 
the | sV — Thompson, Christ. Theism, book i., ch. 3. 

— I" . . Free -wnx. Liberty, Ni 

WISJDO?!. wya Sii W. Temple, "is that which makes man ; 

the best ends, and what the best means to attain 
ana." 

"Wisdom/ 3 says Sb J. Mackintosh, --is the habitual em- 
ployment of a patient and comprehensive understanding in 
combining various and remote means to promote the happi- 
n ::' mankind." 

is the rijghl ose :r exercise of knowledge, and di 
from knowledge, as the use which is made of a power or faculty 
differs from the power or faculty itself. 

Proverbs ch. xv.. v. 2, The tongue of the wise useth i 
ledge aright. Knowledge puiFeth up. Knowledge is pro v 
he hath learned so much. Wisdom is humble that he . 
no more. 

The word corresponding to wisdom was used among the 

led gnate philosophy. And in our translation of the 

Scri] tores, the word wisdom frequently denotes the religi as 

I _ n and love of God. 

. to know) originally signified knowledge or wisdom. 

v, in his wits, out of his wits, for in or out of a sound 

mind. Mr. Locke says (Essay, b. ii., ch. 11), •• Wit hes most 

in the asseinbl; _ s, and putting I gether with 

;-nd variety, wherein can be found any resemblance 

hereby to make up pleasant pictures, and i g 
H in the fancy. Judgment, on the contrary, lies quite 
on the other side, in separating carefully one from an 

3, wherein can be found the least difference, thereby to 
avoid being misled by similitude, and by aihnity to take one 
thing for another. This is a way of proceeding quite eon- 
bar and allusion, wherein, for the most part, 
::tertainment and pleasantry of wit, which strife 



558 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

WIT— 

lively on the fancy, and therefore is so acceptable to all people ; 
because its beauty appears at first sight, and there is required 
no labour of thought to examine what truth or reason there 
is in it." 

" This," says Mr. Addison {Spectator, 62), u is, I think, the 
best and most philosophical account that I ever met with of 
wit, which generally, though not always, consists in such a 
resemblance and congruity of ideas as this author mentions. I 
shall only add to it, by way of explanation, that every resem- 
blance of ideas is not that which we call wit, unless it be such an 
one that gives delight and surprise to the reader : these two pro- 
perties seem essential to wit, more particularly the last of them. 
. . . Mr. Locke's account of wit, with this short explanation, 
comprehends most of the species of wit, as metaphors, simili- 
tudes, allegories, enigmas, mottoes, parables, fables, dreams, 
visions, dramatic writings, burlesques, and all the methods of 
allusion ; as there are many other pieces of wit, how remote 
soever they may appear at first sight, from the foregoing 
description, which, upon examination, will be found to agree 
with it." 

" It is the design of wit," says Dr. Campbell (Phil. o/RJiet., 
b. i., ch. 2, sect. 1), u to excite in the mind an agreeable sur- 
prise, and that arising, not from anything marvellous in the 
subject, but solely from the imagery she employs, or the strange 
assemblage of related ideas presented to the mind. This end 
is effected in one or other of these three ways : first, in debas- 
ing things pompous or seemingly grave : I say seemingly grave, 
because to vilify what is truly grave, has something shocking 
in it, which rarely fails to counteract the end ; secondly, in 
aggrandizing things little and frivolous ; thirdly, in setting 
ordinary objects, by means not only remote but apparently 
contrary, in a particular and uncommon point of view." 

Dr. Barrow (Sermon against Foolish Talking), speaking of 
facetiousness, says, u Sometimes it lieth in pat allusion to a 
known story, or in seasonable application of a trivial saying, or 
in forging an apposite tale : sometimes it playeth in words and 
phrases, taking advantage from the ambiguity of their sense, or 
the affinity of their sound : sometimes it is wrapped in a dress 



VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 559 

WIT— 

of humorous expression : sometimes it lurketli under an odd 
similitude : sometimes it is lodged in a sly question, in a smart 
answer, in a quirkish reason, in a shrewd intimation, in cun- 
ningly diverting or cleverly retorting an objection : sometimes 
it is couched in a bold scheme of speech, in a tart irony, in a 
lusty hyperbole, in a startling metaphor, in a plausible recon- 
ciling of contradictions, or in acute nonsense : sometimes a 
scenical representation of persons or things, a counterfeit speech, 
a mimical look or gesture passeth for it : sometimes an affected 
simplicity : sometimes a presumptuous bluntness giveth it being : 
sometimes it riseth from a lucky hitting upon what is strange : 
sometimes from a crafty wresting obvious matter to the pur- 
pose : often it consisteth in one knows not what, and springeth 
up one can hardly tell how.'' 

" Time icii is like the brilliant stone 

Dug from the Indian mine : 
Which boasts two various powers in one— 

To cut as well as shine. 
'• Genius, like that, if polished bright. 

With the same gifts abounds, 
Appears at once both keen and bright. 

And sparkles while it wounds." — Ahok 

WIT and HUMOUR commonly concur in a tendency to provoke 
laughter, by exhibiting a curious and unexpected affinity ; the 
first generally by comparison, either direct or implied, the 
second by connecting in some other relation, such as causality 
or vicinity, objects apparently the most dissimilar and hetero- 
geneous ; which incongruous affinity gives the true meaning of 
the word oddity, and is the proper object of laughter." — 
Campbell. Phil, of Rhet., b. i., chap. 2, sect. 2. 

11 The feeling of the ludicrous seems to be awakened by the 
discovery of an unexpected relation between objects in other 
respects wholly dissimilar. M — M'Cosh, Typical Forms, b. hi., 
chap. 2, § 5. 

Dr. Trusler says that wit relates to the matter, humour to the 
manner ; that our old comedies abounded with wit, and our old 
actors with humour; that humour always excites laughter, but 
wit does not : that a fellow of humour will set a whole company 
in a roar, but that there is a smartness in wit. which cuts while 



560 VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

WIT and HUMOUR— 

it pleases. Wit, he adds, always implies sense and abilities, 
while humour does not; humour is chiefly relished by the 
vulgar, but education is requisite to comprehend wit. — Taylor, 
Synonyms. 

Lord Shaftesbury has an Essay on the Freedom of Wit and 
Humour. Characteristicks, vol. i. 



ZOONOMY (j^aov, animal; vopos, law). — That department of know- 
ledge which ascertains the laws of organic life. Dr. Darwin 
published a well known work under this title, in which he classi- 
fies the facts belonging to animal life, and by comparing them 
seeks to unravel the theory of diseases. 



INDEX. 









Page 




Abduction, .... 


Analogy and Exampl 


e, . . 25 


Ability (Natural and Moral), . 


1 


and Experience, . . 25 


Abscissio Infiniti, . 
Absolute, 




2 






2 


Analysis and Synthe* 


LI, . 4.V 

>is, . . 26 


Abstinence, 




5 


Analytics, 


28 


Abstract, Abstraction, 




5 


Angelology, 


28 


Abstractive and Intuitive, 




10 


Anima Mundi, 


28 


Absurd, . 




10 


Animism, 


28 


Academics, 




10 


Antecedent, 


29 


Academy, 




11 


Anthropology, 


29 


Acatalepsy, 




11 


Anthropomorphism, 


30 


Accident, 




11 


Anticipation, . 


31 


Accidental, 




12 


Antinomy, 


32 


Acosmist, 




13 


Antipathy, 


33 


Acroamatical, . 




13 


A Parte Ante, A Pai 


-tePost, . 34 


Act and Action, 




14 


Apathy, . 


34 


Active, . 




16 


Aphorism, 


35 


Activity, v. Will. 






Apodeictic, 


36 


Actual," . 




16 


Apologue, 


36 


Actus Primus, 




16 


Apology, 


37 


Secundus, . 




16 


Apophthegm, . 


37 


Adage, 




16 


Apperception, . 


38 


Adjuration, 






17 


Appetite, 


38 


Admiration, 






17 


Apprehension, 


40 


Adoration, 






17 


Apprehend and Com 


prehend, . 40 


Adscititious, 






17 


Approbation (Moral) 


, . . 41 


jEsthetics, 






17 


A Priori and A Post< 


srioxi, . 41 


Aetiology, 






18 


Arbor Porphyriana, 


43 


Affection, 






18 


Archa?us, 


44 


Affinity, . 






18 


Archelogy, 


44 


Affirmation, 






18 


Archetype, 


44 


A Fortiori, 






19 


Architectonick, 


45 


Agent, 






19 


Argument, 


45 


Agnoiology, 






19 


(Indirect), . 


46 


Alchemy, 






19 


Argumentation, 


47 


Allegory, 






19 


Art, 


48 


Ambition, 






20 


Asceticism, . • 


50 


Amphibology, 






20 


j Assent, . 


51 


Amphiboly, 






20 


! Assertion, 


51 


Analogue, 






20 


; Assert or v, 


51 


Analog 






20 


Association, 


52 


and Mc 


»f innnr 




9A \ vcnmnfinn 


53 




L..IW.UU1, • . trz lU'ouiiijJiiuii. . 










2 








562 


INDEX. 






Page 




Page 


Atheism, . 


54 


Comprehension, 


98 


Atom, Atomism, 


55 


Compunction, 


98 


Attention, . 


56 


Conceiving and Apprehending, 


98 


Attribute, . 


57 


Concept, . 


99 


Authentic, . 


58 


Conception, . . . . 


100 


Authority (Principle of), 


58 


and Imagination, 


101 


Autocrasy, . 
Automaton and Automatic, 


59 
59 




103 
104 


tlllU JLdCcl, • . • 

Conceptualism, 


Automatism, . 


60 


Conclusion, . 


105 


Autonomy, . 


60 


Concrete, . 


105 


Autotheists, . 


61 


Condignity, v. Merit. 




Axiom, .... 


61 


Condition, . 
Conditional, v. Proposition. 


105 


Beauty, . 


62 


Congmity, 


106 


Being, 


63 


Conjugate, 


107 


Belief, .... 


64 


Connotative, . 


107 


Benevolence, . 


66 


Consanguinity, 


. 107 


Blasphemy, 


66 


Conscience, 


107 


Body, .... 


61 


Consciousness, 


109 


Bonum, . . 


61 


and Feeling, 


113 


, Morale, 


68 


Consent, , 


114 


, Summum, . 

Brocard, 


68 


i'TT * a „ 1\ 


114 


69 


- ^ U IllVcibdly, • 

Consequent, v. Antecedent. 






Consilience of Inductions, 


. 114 


Camesthesis, . 


69 


Constitutive, . . . 


. 115 


Capacity, 


69 


Contemplation, 


. 115 


Cardinal Virtues, . • . 


70 


Continence, 


. 115 


Casuistry, 


71 


Contingent, 


. 115 


Catalepsy, 


72 


Continuity (Law of), 


. 117 


Categorematic, 


72 


Contract, 


. 118 


Categorical, v. Proposition. 




Contradiction (Principle of), 


. 119 


Category, 


73 


Contraries, 


. 120 


Causality, 


77 


Conversion, 


. 121 


Causation, 


80 


Copula, . 


. 121 


Cause, .... 


75 


Cosmogony, 


. 121 


Causes (Final), 


81 


Cosmology, v. Metaphysics. 




(Occasional), 


83 


Craniology, v. Phrenology. 




Certainty, Certitude, 


84 


Cranioscopy, v. Organ. 




Chance, .... 


87 


Creation, 


. 122 


Chances (Theory of), 


89 


Credulity, 


. 122 


Chanty, .... 


89 


Criterion, 


. 122 


Chastity, 


89 


Critick, Criticism, Critique, 


. 123 


Choice, .... 


89 


Cumulative (The Argument), 


. 124 


Chrematistics, 


90 


Custom, .... 


. 124 


Civility, Courteousness, . 


90 


Cynic, .... 


. 125 


Classification, 


91 






Cognition, 


92 


Dsemonist, 


. 126 


Colligation of Facts, 


93 


Data, .... 


. 126 


Combination and Connection 


of 


Deduction, 


. 126 


Ideas, .... 


93 


De Facto, De Jure, . 


. 127 


Common Sense, 


95 


Definition, 


. 127 


(Philosophy of), . 


95 


Deist, .... 


. 130 


Common, v. Term. 




Demiurge, 


. 130 


Compact, 


97 


Demon, .... 


. 131 


Comparison, 


97 


Demonstration, 


. 131 


Compassion, v. Sympathy. 




Denomination (External), v. M 


Dde. 


Complex, 


97 


Deontology, 


132 





INDEX. 


563 




Page 




Page 


Design, .... 


. 133 


Episyllogism, .... 


163 


Desire, .... 


. 134 


Equanimity, v. Magnanimity. 




Destiny, 


. 135 


Equity, ..... 


163 


Determinism, . 


. 135 


Equivocal, .... 


164 


Dialectic, 


. 136 


Equivocation, .... 


165 


Dialectics, 


. 136 


Error, 


166 


Dianoiology, v. Noology. 




Esoteric and Exoteric, 


167 


Dichotomy, 


. 137 


Essence, 


168 


Dictum de Omni et Nullo, 


. 138 


Eternity, .... 


170 


— Simpliciter, 


. 138 


of God, 


171 


Difference, 


. 138 


Ethics, 


171 


Dilemma, 


. 139 


Ethnography, 


172 


Discovery, v. Invention. 




Ethnology, .... 


172 


Discursus, 


. 140 


Ethology, .... 


172 


Disjunctive, v. Proposition. 




Eudemonism, 


172 


Disposition, 


. 140 


Euretic or Euristic, v, Ostensive. 




Distinction, 


. 141 


Evidence, . . . 


172 


Distribution, . 


. 142 


Evil, . .... 


174 


Ditheism, 


. 143 


Example, v. Analogy. 




Division, 


. 143 


Excluded Middle, . 


175 


Divorce, .... 


. 145 


Existence, .... 


175 


Dogmatism, . 


. 145 


Exoteric, v. Esoteric. 




Doubt, .... 


. 146 


Expediency (Doctrine of), 


176 


Dreaming, 


. 147 


Experience, .... 


176 


Dualism, Duality, . 


. 147 


Experiment, v. Observation. 




1 Duration, 


. 148 


Experimentum Crucis, 


180 


Duty, .... 


. 148 


Extension, .... 


181 


1 Dynamism, 


, 148 


Externality or Outness, . 


183 


Eclecticism, 


. 148 


Fable, 


183 


I Economics, 


. 150 


Fact, 


183 


Ecstacy, 


. 151 


Factitious, .... 


184 


Ectype, v. Type. 




Faculty, .... 


184 


i Education, 


. 151 


Faculties of the Mind, 


188 


i Effect, .... 


. 152 


Faith, v. Belief. 




i Ego, .... 


. 152 


Fallacy, ..... 


191 


Egoism, Egoist, 


. 153 


Fallacia iEquivocationis, 


191 


Election, 


. 153 


Amphibolia3, 


191 


Element, 


. 154 


Compositionis, 


191 


| Elementology, v. Methodology 




Divisionis, . 


191 


Elicit, . ... 


'. 155 


Accentus, . 


191 


! Elimination, . 


. 155 


Figurae Dictionis, 


191 


Emanation, 
: Eminently, v. Virtual. 
Emotion, 


. 155 




191 




. 156 


ad Dictum Simpliciter, 


192 


* Empiric, Empiricism, 


. 157 


Ignorationis Elenchi, . 


192 


Emulation, 


. 158 


A non Causa pro Causa, 


192 


1 Ends 


. 158 


PAVicnnnnnf! - 


192 








. 159 
. 159 




192 


Entelechy, 


■ Plurium Interrogationum, 


192 


Enthusiasm, . 


. 161 


False, Falsity, 


193 


Enthymeme, . 


. 161 


Fancy, 


193 


Entity, . 


. 162 


Fashion,v. Custom. 




j Enunciation, . 


. 162 


Fatalism, Fate, 


195 


Epicheirema, . 


. 162 


Fear, 


196 


] Epicurean, 


. 163 


Feeling, .... 


196 


Epistemology, 


. 163 


Fetichism, .... 


198 



564 



INDEX. 



Figure, v. Syllogism. 
Fitness and Unfitness, 
Force, .... 
Form, .... 
Formally, v. Real, Virtual, Action. 
Fortitude, .... 
Free Will, v. Liberty, Necessity, 
Friendship, 
Function, 

Generalization, 

General Term, v. Term. 

Genius, 

Genuine, v. Authentic. 

Genus, ..... 

Gnome, . . 

God, .... 

Good (The Chief), . 

Grammar (Universal), 

Grandeur, 

Gratitude, 

Gymnosophist, 



Habit, .... 

Happiness, 

Harmony (Pre-established), 

of the Spheres, . 

Hatred, v. Love. 

Hedonism, 

Hermetic Books, 

Heuristic, v. Ostensive. 

Holiness, 

Homologue, 

Homonymous, v. Equivocal. 

Homotype, 

Humour, 

Hylozoism, 

Hypostasis, v. Subsistentia. 

Hypothesis, 

Hypothetical, v» Proposition. 



I, v. Ego, Subject. 

Idea, 

Ideal, . . • 

Idealism, 

Idealist, . 

Ideation and Ideational, 

Identical Proposition, 

Identism or Identity, 

Identity, 

(Personal), 

(Principle of), 

Ideology or Idealogy, 
Idiosyncrasy, . 
Idol, 

Ignorance, 
Illation, . 



199 
200 
201 

204 

204 
204 

205 

206 

208 
209 
209 
210 
210 
211 
212 
212 

212 
215 
216 
217 

218 
218 

218 
218 

219 
219 
219 

220 



222 

228 
231 
232 
232 
233 
233 
234 
234 
236 
236 
237 
237 
238 
238 



Illuminati, 
Imagination, . 

and Fancy, 

and Conception, 

and Memory, 



Imitation, 

Immanence, 

Immanent, , 

Immaterialism, 

Immateriality, 

Immortality (of the Soul) 

Immutability, . 

Impenetrability, 

Imperate, v. Elicit, Act. 

Imperative, 

Impossible, 

Impression, 

Impulse and Impulsive, 

Imputation, . 

Inclination, 

Indefinite, 

Indifference (Liberty of), 

Indifferent Action, . ' . 

Indifferentism or Identism, 

Indiscernibles (Identity of), 

Individual, 

Individualism, 

Individuality, . 

Individuation, 

Induction (Process of), 

(Principle of), 

Inertia, . 

In Esse, In Posse, 

Inference, 

and Proof, 

Infinite, . 

Influx (Physical), 

Injury, . 

Innate Ideas, . 

Instinct, . 

Intellect, 

Intellection, 

Intelligence, 

Intellectus, Patiens, Agens, 

Intent or Intention, 

Intention (First and Second), 

Interpretation of Nature, 

Intuition, 

Invention, 

Irony, 

Judgment, 
Jurisprudence, 
Justice, . 

Kabala, . 
Knowledge, 



INDEX. 



565 



Language, 
Laughter, 
Law, 

(Empirical), 

Lemma, . 

Libertarian, 

Liberty of Will, 

Life, 

Logic, . 

Love and Hatred, 



Macrocosm and Microcosm, 
Magic, .... 
Magnanimity and Equanimity, 
Manicheism, . . 
Materialism, . 
Mathematics, . 
Matter, . 

• and Form, . 



Page 
284 
284 
285 
288 
289 
289 
289 
291 
293 
296 

296 
297 
297 
298 
299 
299 
300 
301 
302 
302 



Maxim, 

Memory, 

Memoria Technica or Mnemonics, 307 

Mental Philosophy, ... 308 

Merit, 308 

Metaphor, .... 309 

Metaphysics, .... 310 

Metempsychosis, . . . 315 

Method, 316 

Methodology, .... 319 
Metonymy, v. Intention. 
Microcosm, v. Macrocosm. 

Mind, 319 

Miracle, 320 

Mnemonics, v, Memoria Technica. 

Modality, .... 320 

Mode, 321 

Molecule, . . . . 322 

Monad, 323 

Monadology, .... 323 

Monogamy, . . . 324 

Monotheism, .... 324 
Mood, v. Syllogism. 

Moral, 324 

Faculty, v. Conscience. 

Morality, .... 325 
Moral Philosophy, . . .326 
Moral Sense, v. Senses (Reflex). 

Morphology, .... 327 

Motion, 328 

Motive, 328 

Mysticism, .... 332 

Mystery, 332 

Myth and Mythology, . . 334 

Natura, v. Nature. 

Natural, 335 

Naturalism, .... 336 



of), 



Nature, . 

(Course of), 

(Plastic), 

(Philosophy 

(Law of), 

(of Things), 

(Human), 

Necessity, 

(Doctrine of), 

Negation, 
Nihilism, 

Nihilum or Nothing, 
Nominalism, . 
Non-contradiction, v, 
Non Sequitur, 
Noogonie, 
Noology, . 
Norm, 
Notion, . 

Notiones Communes, 
Noumenon, 
Novelty, . 
Number. . 



Oath, . 

Object, v. Subject. 

Objective, 

Obligation, 

Observation, . 

Occasion, 

Occasional Causes, v. Cause. 

Occult Qualities, v. Quality. 

Occult Sciences, v. Sciences. 

One, v. Unity. 

Oneiromancy, v. Dreaming. 

Ontology, 

Operations of the Mind, . 

Opinion, .... 

Opposed, Opposition, 

Optimism, 

Order, .... 

Organ, .... 

Organon or Organum, 

Origin, .... 

Origination, 

Ostensive, 

Oughtness, v. Duty. 

Outness, 



Page 
336 
338 
339 
339 
339 
340 
342 
342 
343 
345 
345 
346 
346 
Contradiction. 



Pact, v. Contract, Promise. 

Palingenesia, v. Perfectibility. 

Pantheism, 

Parable, 

Paradox, 

Paralogism, 

Parcimony (Law of), 

Paronymous, v. Conjugate. 



566 


INDEX. 






Page 




Page 


Part, .... 


. 371 


Proprium, 


. 408 


Passion, 


372 


Prosyllogism, v. Epicheirema. 


Passions (The), 


372 


Protype, v. Type. 




Perception, 


. 373 


Proverb, 


. 408 


Perceptions (Obscure), 


, 374 


Providence, 


. 409 


Perfect, Perfection, . 


. 376 


Prudence, 


. 410 


Perfectibility, . 


377 


Pscyhism, 


. 411 


Peripatetic, 


378 


Pscyhology, 


. 411 


Person, Personality, 


378 


Psychopannychism, 


. 414 


Petitio Principii, 


380 


Pyrrhonism, v. Academics 


Scepticism. 


Phantasm, v. Idea. 








Phenomenology, v. Nature. 




Quadrivium, v. Trivium. 




Phenomenon, 


. 380 


Quality, . 


. 414 


Philanthropy, 


. 381 


(Occult), . 


. 416 


Philosophy, 


, 383 


Quantity, 


. \ 416 


Phrenology, 


. 384 


, Discrete, &c, 


. 417 


Physiognomy, 


. 385 


Quiddity, 


. 418 


Physiology and Physics, . 


387 


Quietism, 


. 419 


Picturesque, . 


, 387 






Pneumatics, 


. 388 


Race, v. Species. 




Pneumatology, 


388 


Ratio, 


. 419 


Poetry or Poesy, 


389 


Ratiocination, . 


. 419 


Pollicitation, v. Promise. 




Rationale, 


. 420 


Polygamy, 


. 390 


Rationalism, . 


. 420 


Polytheism, 


. 390 


Rationalists, . 


. 421 


Positive, v. Moral, Term. 




Real, 


. 421 


Positivism, 


. 390 


Realism, 


. 422 


Possible, 


*391 


Reason, . 


. 422 


Postulate, 


392 


(Spontaneity of), 


. 424 


Potential, 


, 393 


and Understandin 


g, . 424 


Potentiality, v. Capacity. 






. 428 


^lniperbuiidj.^, 


Power, .... 


393 




. 431 


v^iyeiei iniiuugj, 


Practical, 


, 396 


Reasoning, 


. 431 


Predicate, 


396 


Recollection, v. Remembn 


mce. 


Prsedicable, 


396 


Rectitude, 


• 432 


Pra3dicament, . 


397 


Redintegration, v. Train of Thought. 


Prse-Prasdicamenta, 


397 


Reduction in Logic, . 


. 434 


Prejudice, 


397 


Reflection, 


. 435 


Premiss, 


398 


Reflex Senses, v. Senses (Reflex). 


Prescience, . . . 


398 


Regulative, 


. 436 


Presentative, v. Knowledge. 




Relation, 


. 436 


Primary, 


398 


Relative, 


. 438 


Principia Essendi, . 


399 


Religion, 


. 438 


Principle, 


. 399 


Remembrance, 


. 439 


Principles of Knowledge, . 


399 


Reminiscence, . 


. 440 


— ■ Express or Operative, 


. 400 


Representative, v. Knowle 


dge. 


of Action, . 


401 


Reservation or Restriction 


. 443 


Privation, 


402 


Retention, 


. 444 


Probability, v. Chances. 




Right, . 


. 444 


Probable, 


403 


Rosicrucians, . 


. 446 


Problem, 


. 404 


Rule, .... 


. 447 


Progress, v. Perfectibility. 








Promise and Pollicitation, 


404 


Sabaism, 


. 448 


Proof, .... 


405 


Same, . . . 


. 448 


Property, 


406 


Sanction, 


. 448 


Proposition, 


406 


Savage and Barbarous, . 


. 449 


Propriety, . 


408 


Scepticism, 


. 450 



INDEX. 



567 



Schema, . 
Scholastic, 

Scholastic Philosophy, 
Science, . 

Sciences (Occult), . 
Scientia (Media), 
Sciolist, . 
Sciomachy, 
Secularism, 
Secundum Quid, 



Page 
451 
451 
452 
453 
455 
455 
455 
455 
456 
456 



Self-Consciousness, v. Apperception. 
Selfishness, .... 456 
Self-love, . . .457 

Sematology, . . . .458 
Sensation, .... 459 

and Perception, . . 460 

Sense, 462 

Senses (Reflex), ... 462 
Sensibility or Sensitivity, . 463 

Sensibles, Common and Proper, 463 
Sensism, Sensualism, Sensuism, 464 
Sensorium, . 464 

Sensus Communis, . . . 465 
Sentiment, .... 465 

and Opinion, . . 467 

Sign, 468 

Significates, v. Term. 

Simile, v. Metaphor. 

Sin, v. Evil. 

Sincerity, .... 469 

Significates, v. Term (Common). 

Singular, v. Term. 

Socialism, .... 

Society (Desire of), 

(Political Capacity of), 

Somatology, v. Nature. 
Sophism, Sophister, Sophistical, 

Sorites, 

Soul, 

, Spirit, Mind, . 

of the World, v. Anima Mundi. 

Space, 
Species, 



■ in Perception, 
Specification (Principle of), 
Speculation, 
Spirit, v. Soul. 
Spiritualism, . 
Spontaneity, . , . . 
Spontaneous, . 
Standard of Virtue, 
States of Mind, 
Statistics, 

Stoics, .... 
Subject, Object, 
Subjectivism, . 
Sublime (The), 



469 
470 
471 

471 

472 
473 

477 

478 
481 
483 
485 
485 

486 
486 
487 
487 
487 
489 
490 
491 
492 
493 



Subsistentia, 
Substance, 

(Principle of). 

Subsumption, . 
Succession, 
Sufficient Reason, 
Suggestion, 
Suicide, . 
Superstition, . 
Supra- N at uralism 
Syllogism, 
Symbol, v. Myth. 
Sympathy, 
Syncategorematic, v. 
Syncretism, 
Synderesis, 
Syneidesis, 
Synteresis, 
Synthesis, 
System, . 
, Economy, 

Tabula Rasa, . 

Tact, 

Talent, . 

Taste, 

Teleology, 

Temperament, 

Temperance, . 

Tendency, 

Term, 

(Absolute), 

(Abstract), 

(Common), 

(Compatible), 

(Complex), 

(Concrete), 

(Contradictory), 

(Contrary), 

(Definite), 

(indefinite) 

(Negative), 

(Opposite), 

(Positive), 

(Privative), 

(Relative), 

(Simple), 

(Singular), 

Terminists, v. Nominalism 

Testimony, * . 

Theism, . 

Theocracy, 

Theodicy, 

Theogony, 

Theology, 

/Natural, 

Theopathy, 



Categorematic. 



568 



INDEX. 




Theo^V • * * 
Theosophism, Theosophy, 

Thesis, . 

Thought and Thinking, 

Topology,'* Memoria Techmca. 

Tradition, 

Train of Thought, . 

Transcendent, 

Transcendental, . ■ 

Transference, Translation, - 

Transmigration, .Metempsychosis. 

Transposition, v. Conversion. ^ 

Trivium, 

Truth, . • 

Truths (First), 

Type, • • 

"Ubiety, . • 

Unconditioned, 

Understanding, 

Unification, 

Unitarian, 

Unity or Oneness, 



Universals, . 
Univocal Words, 
Usage, v. Custom. 
Utility, . 



Velleity, . 

Veracity, 

Verbal, . m • • 

Veritas Entis, t I 

Cognitionis, > v. 

Signi, ) 

Virtual, . 

Virtue, . 

Volition, 

Well-bemg, . 

Whole, . 

Why, 

Will, 

Wisdom, 

Wit, 

Wit and Humour, 

Zoonomy, 



Page 
543 
545 

546 

547 
547 
547 



Truth. 



548 
548 
549 

550 
551 
552 
553 
557 
557 
559 



BELL A*D BAIN, PBIHTBEB, GLASGOW. 



„S ARY 0F CONGRESS 



019 953 495 6 









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